


This is how it starts

by rinnya



Series: This is how it starts. [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Boys In Love, Bucky and Steve never met, Domestic Avengers, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Imprinting, M/M, Mild Language, Mild Sexual Content, Misunderstandings, Not Canon Compliant, Not Captain America: The First Avenger Compliant, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Clint Barton, POV Multiple, POV Pepper Potts, POV Sam Wilson, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Pepper Potts, Russian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2018-10-17 06:38:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 35,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10588482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinnya/pseuds/rinnya
Summary: Steve Rogers and The Winter Soldier meet for the first time in 2014 during the canon divergence events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.It starts like this: this is how they fall in love.(C13: They’re still fighting, Iron Man and Captain America.Wanda feels it. They seem nice to each other, but Steve is still mad at Tony, and Tony is still mad at everything.She thinks that Steve has a right to be mad at Tony, because what he did was stupid, but staying mad this long is even more stupid, because they’re friends.She tells that to the Vision, who nods and says, “I agree. The Captain and Sir have gone through a lot of battles before, it would be a shame for this to split them apart.”“At least they’re not fighting over a book,” Wanda says.“Yes,” the Vision says, “that would be terrible. Tear-rible. Like the pun. Do you know what puns are? I’ve been doing some reading.”)





	1. This Is How It Starts

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Situation: Normal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5373887) by [redcigar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcigar/pseuds/redcigar). 
  * Inspired by [Dick Move](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5168561) by [anenglishwolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anenglishwolf/pseuds/anenglishwolf). 



> Inspired by several mixed up fics but I can't find them right now. Will put them in the inspired by: section when I come across them.

**This is how it starts**

“When ducklings or chicks hatch, they form a really strong emotional attachment with the first larger animal they see, and regard themselves as one of them, following them around and learning from what they regard as their parent, acquiring behavioral characteristics and whatnot,” Bruce says, “that’s called filial imprinting. There are different types of imprinting, of course, but-”

“-what Brucey-Bear means to say is,” Tony interrupts, “is that Robocop here thinks you’re his handler.”

“I’m worried about what Hydra’s handlers do,” Clint quips.

They all glance briefly to the Soldier crouched at the corner of the room. Steve shifts uncomfortably on the couch. 

“He hasn’t imprinted on me,” Steve insists. He gets to his feet. The Soldier does, too.

“Of course,” Bruce notes, nodding. It’s a rather mocking nod. 

Steve narrows his eyes at him, gets up, and leaves. The Soldier walks briskly after Steve, sliding past the shutting elevator doors.

They hear Steve’s sigh. Clint snickers.

\--

It starts like this:

The helicarrier falls. What’s left of the scattered Avengers rush to the riverbank and dig through the debris and wreckage of what used to be a giant helicopter-super spy headquarters-apartment-everything in the sky, 

Their spoils are: 

One: Unconscious Captain America sprawled across the mud in a half shredded uniform minus the shield, drenched in river water and blood, chest slowly rising and falling with each ragged breath.

One: Conscious Winter Soldier, staring coldly at everyone and eyes narrowed as he positioned himself between said Captain America and the rest of the Avengers, metal arm whirring softly.

One: Conscious and adorable family of cats, one ginger and two calico kittens, and their calico mother, in various degree of wetness and watching the proceedings in mild interest.  

Natasha snapped something in Russian. The Winter Soldier stiffened, but said something back angrily.

“What’s he saying? Natasha?”

She let a slow, slow grin spread across her face.

The Winter Soldier said something again, angrier.

“Don’t keep us in suspense,” Sam said, “what’s he saying?”

Clint snickered.

“Listen, hawkguy, I installed those translators in your hearing aids and I can take them out. What is our dear friend trying to say that got both you and your dangerous assassin ladyfriend here in such giggles?”

Natasha flipped Tony the bird. The Winter Soldier growled.

> Natasha: Stand down Soldier, Hydra’s gone.
> 
> The Winter Soldier: Black Widow. Your new allies are stupid. This one let me live.
> 
> The Winter Soldier: That one looks dumb.

\--

Which brings them to:

One: Unconscious Steve Rogers bundled in hospital sheets and drenched in medication, expression troubled as he slept, occasionally shifting and almost entangling the various tubes attached to his self.

One: Conscious Winter Soldier, hanging off the windowsill, staring coldly at nothing in particular, eyes narrowed as his gaze flickers to Steve and Sam and the beeping machines.

One, very uncomfortable and very nervous Sam Wilson, shifting in his seat and attempting to look as small and as nonthreatening as possible, hand hovering between Steve’s arm and the glass of water.

Sam touches Steve’s arm. 

The Winter Soldier growls at him.

Sam lets go immediately. He takes the glass of water and hesitantly holds it out to the Soldier.

The Winter Soldier growls at him, again.

Sam sets the glass of water down.

\--

“On your left.”

“On your right, you piece of shi-” 

The Winter Soldier growls.

“-vering super soldier,” Sam finishes.

The Winter Soldier sits back, slightly mollified. 

Steve turns to his right. “Oh. Uh, hi, soldier.”

The Winter Soldier nudges the glass of water towards Steve, eyes narrowed with intent. Steve takes it, and The Winter Soldier gives what could be the smallest nod possible and looks on approvingly as Steve drinks. He looks up and narrows his eyes at Sam.

Sam shifts his seat slightly towards the door, just in case.

\--

And a few days later, the situation is thus:

“I’m concerned,” Tony says.

Steve agrees. He grabs the bowl of cereal that Clint has poured for him. 

The Winter Soldier growls.

Steve hands the bowl of cereal over to The Winter Soldier, who sniffs, pokes and prods at the cereal before he was satisfied that it was not poisoned or whatever, then hands the cereal back.

“It’s cute,” Natasha says.

“Only you would find a man searching for poison in your cereal cute,” Tony shoots back. Natasha shrugs.

Steve reaches for the carton of milk. The Winter Soldier growls at him, again.

“It hasn’t expired, Pepper bought it yesterday,” Steve insisted, but handed the carton over anyways.

\--

It’s not until Natasha witnesses what she cautiously dubs as The Incident, that she says, “I’m concerned, too,” to which Tony says, “hah!”

\--

The Incident was such:

One: Blushing and nervous Steve Rogers with a towel hung loosely around his waist, dripping wet and legs crossed, obviously hiding a Problem with a capital P between his legs. 

One: Pouting Winter Soldier looking rather inconvenienced by the towel hanging loosely around Steve’s waist, nursing an already fading red slap mark on his cheek.

One: Laughing Clint Barton on the dining table, who had fallen out of somewhere in the ceiling and was clutching his belly in peals of hysterical laughter.

One: Terrified Sam Wilson who had darted behind Natasha and was currently crouching between her legs as The Winter Soldier glared at him.

“I screamed in the shower,” Steve explained.

“His pitch was higher than the kicks from his showgirls back in the 1940s,” Clint adds.

“Ah, The… Soldier, and I heard him,” Sam says, and winces at the force of the glare, “he, uh, broke the toilet door down and ran in. And, uh, apparently I’m not allowed to be in the toilet when Steve is in the toilet, but he is.”

“I just slipped,” Steve sighed into his hand.

“Is that a hickey on your neck?” Natasha asks. At that, The Winter Soldier looks up, expression smug.

“It’s… really not,” Steve says. It is.

\--

“I’m concerned,” Sam says.

“We know,” Bruce replies. He chews on a celery stick.

Sam reaches over for the chicken, and his arm brushes Steve’s. 

The Winter Soldier growls.

“No,” Steve chides. He passes some chicken to Sam. The Winter Soldier growls again, but softer.

“Is he going to kill me?” Sam asks. He moves his seat slightly further from Steve’s, just in case.

“He’s not,” Steve sighs, then turns to The Soldier, “please don’t.”

Clint snickers. “Can I try something?”

“No,” Steve chides.

“I’m doing it anyways,” he says. Clint reaches over, and flicks a fork. It whizzes past Steve’s head.

The Winter Soldier flips the dinner table.

\--

What Clint dubs as The Other Incident was such:

One: Terrified Clint Barton, nursing a sprained ankle and a bruised collarbone and three broken ribs, seated on the couch as far away as possible from The Winter Soldier.

One: Furious Winter Soldier, glaring at Clint with a ferocity that impressed Natasha, side pressed into Steve, somehow growling and purring at the same time.

One: Exasperated Steve Rogers with his hands entangled in The Winter Soldier’s hair, scratching said Soldier’s scalp which seemed to be the only thing capable of keeping him seated, while staring at Clint with the Captain America Is Disappointed In You face.

Four: Avengers seated around the common area, chewing on what they could save from the upturned dinner table, and from Tony’s supply of instant food.

“You deserved it,” Natasha grins.

“I know,” Clint says miserably.

The Winter Soldier growls, then purrs.

“No murder,” Steve chides, then, “you deserved it, Clint.”

\--

But eventually the situation brings them to this:

“Steve, is that your sweater?”

Steve looks up from his newspaper. He brings a hand over to the steaming mug of coffee that Bruce had sat in front of him.

Expectedly, The Winter Soldier growls.

Steve hands over the coffee mug.

“It is,” Steve nods tiredly. He takes back the coffee mug.

Natasha looks up, amused. The sweater is slightly too big but the Soldier looks content in it.

Steve takes a sip of the coffee. 

“That’s really domestic, Cap,” Tony remarks. Pepper is curled up on the loveseat next to him in his hoodie, flicking through her phone.

The Soldier looks smug at that. 

\--

In Sam’s opinion, it is very unusual that a prisoner of war of over 70 years would suffer from little to no PTSD effects, so he’s, honestly, rather relieved when The WInter Soldier started to show signs of normal PTSD effects and coping mechanisms. Steve, however, is not.

“He’s terrified,” Steve says, rubbing circles on The Soldier’s back, who’s curled up in a ball and shaking uncontrollably in Steve’s arms.

“It’s normal,” Sam reassures, “to have nightmares after traumatic experiences.”

“I know,” Steve looks miserable. “He crawled into the covers with me at 3am and hasn’t stopped crying since.”

“It’s 3pm,” Bruce notes worriedly.

The Soldier murmurs something in Russian between choked sobs. Natasha says something back.  The Soldier bawls harder, sputtering broken russian, and digs his nails into Steve’s back.

“Natasha,” Steve chides.

The redhead frowns sadly. “Oh Steve,” she sighs. Clint looks at them, a sober expression on his face.

“Yeah?” Steve looks at her, brows furrowed.

She smiles sadly. The Soldier blinks at her, and buries his face in Steve’s neck. 

> The Winter Soldier: I didn’t complete my mission. Hydra will be mad.
> 
> Natasha: Hydra’s gone. You’re safe.
> 
> The Winter Soldier: They’ll get me. They’ll get him.

\--

It’s inevitable that Thor pays a visit.

“Greetings, Soldier of Winter,” he booms, “I am Thor of Asgard. I am pleased to make your acquaintance!”

The Winter Soldier growls at him. It seems to be his only mode of communication, other than Russian.

Thor is not deterred. He laughs, “I have heard that you have chosen the Captain to be your Shield Mate! A fine choice. May the nights be long and pleasurable!”

Steve blushes. Tony snickers. The Winter Soldier looks smug.

“It’s not like that,” Steve starts. The Soldier shoots him an offended look.

“We’re just friends,” he finishes weakly, still red. The Soldier looks from Steve, to Thor, then to Steve again. He shifts his position and abruptly kicks Steve off the couch. 

Steve crashes through the coffee table. Pepper yelps.

“Hey!” Steve says. He spins around to see the Soldier pouting on the couch, looking betrayed.

“I’m… sorry,” Steve tries. The Soldier huffs, and reaches over to kick Steve again, before vaulting over the couch and disappearing from the room.

There was a pause.

“Ouch,” Sam says, dryly.

“Guess you’re sleeping on the couch tonight, huh honey,” Tony grins. Pepper smacks him.

Thor looks slightly disappointed in Steve. “You should apologize, for putting down your Shield Mate like that, Captain. It’s not right.”

“I will, Thor,” Steve reassures.

\--

Unfortunately, Steve doesn’t see the Soldier again, until he pads into Steve’s room in one of his sweaters and socks too big for his feet.

Steve sits up. “I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” he says softly, “but we’re really not… like that, are we?”

The Soldier says nothing.

“Did you have another nightmare?” Steve asks again. He thinks he sees a nod.

“You want a hug?”

A head shake.

Steve frowns, then spreads his arms open, a soft smile on his face, “come on, Soldier, you’re home from the war. Give your best guy a hug, yeah?”

The Soldier looks at him for a long moment, before sliding onto the bed. Steve pulls him into his embrace, and the Soldier starts to sniffle. 

This is how Natasha finds them in the morning, asleep. She closes the door behind her.

\--

“It’s nice to see you two have reunited,” Thor congratulates, “A lovers’ quarrel cannot last longer than a night in bed, yes?”

The Soldier pauses in his lasagna, and watches Steve for a reaction.

“Yeah,” Steve says, and smiles, “Thor, you’re right.

Thor beams. The Soldier slides off his seat and onto Steve’s lap, hugging the pot of food to his chest. Steve reaches around him to get a spoon of lasagna.

“That’s so domestic,” Tony sighs. “My heart is full. Pepper?”

Pepper stares at him, before rolling her eyes. She slides off her chair and sits herself on Tony’s lap, typing on her tablet. 

Natasha says something in Russian. The Soldier says something back.

There is a strange expression on her face, and she replies. The Soldier stares at her, and he says something else, almost content.

Clint looks from Natasha, to Steve, to The Soldier, “Oh Steve.”

“Yeah?” Steve looks at him.

Clint smiles sadly. Natasha does, too.

> Natasha: How are you, Soldier?
> 
> The Winter Soldier: Remember I told you that love was for children?
> 
> Natasha: I was young then.
> 
> The Winter Soldier: I think I was wrong.

\--   
It starts like this:

The Soldier curled up in a ball against Steve’s chest, Steve’s large hand stroking his hair, as they watch a movie with the rest of the Avengers with the lights dimmed.

“How’s soldier-boy?” Tony asks.

“His name is James,” Steve says, “he told me yesterday.”

“Huh,” Clint says. “Cool.”

“How are you and James, then,” Pepper asks.

James says something in russian.

Natasha blinks, surprised, then smiles. Clint looks content.

“What did he say?” Steve asks. He has been learning russian, but he’s not fluent enough to catch the words.

“He says that he’s wrong,” Natasha tells him.  James looks up, blinks sleepily at Pepper and Natasha, then rests his head on Steve’s chest.

\--

It starts like this: this is how they fall in love.


	2. Protection Detail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This is how it starts", from The Winter Soldier's POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just felt like seeing how this turned out.

The Winter Soldier crouches over Captain America, prodding.

He isn’t sure what the protocol for this is . There probably isn’t one for when your mission tries to help you.

Well, an act of kindness begets another.

The Soldier pulls the walking american flag out of the river.

He almost leaves him there, too, then the Avengers appear.

Slowasses.

Widow is holding two pistols. They’re aimed at him.

Smart girl.

“Stand down Soldier, Hydra’s gone,” she snarls, in Russian.

Everyone is staring at him intensely.

“Black Widow,” he acknowledges, also in Russian. He glances at the Captain.

“Your allies are stupid,” he tells her, “this one let me live.”

Widow’s eyes widen a fraction, then starts grinning.

“What’s he saying? Natasha?” A man demands.

He looks stupid. He tells Widow that, too.

\--

He’s crouching on one side of the hospital bed.

The Captain’s debt has not been repaid, sufficiently.

Falcon touches Captain’s arm.

He growls at Falcon.

The Captain is compromised. Widow’s ally or not, the Soldier does not trust him.

Falcon edges his seat just slightly further away, then picks up a glass of water.

The Soldier stares him down, until Falcon looks uncomfortable, then growls.

He has no need for water, at the moment.

Falcon sets the glass down, and edges his seat away, again.

Satisfied, he turns his attention to the tablet he swiped from a visitor.

“Where did you get that?” Falcon asks.

The Soldier ignores him, and starts to search about the Captain.

\--

Wow.

WOW.

Captain America is a dumbass.

\--

Captain America-Steve Rogers doesn’t need to protect.

He needs to be protected.

From himself.

\--

The Soldier’s almost impressed.

How can someone possibly be so-

-so incredibly, lacking of self-preservation?

\--

Wow.

\--

The Soldier looks up from his tablet.

“You’re a dumbass,” he tells Steve.

“I didn’t understand a single word of what you just said,” Steve tells him.

Right. Russian.

“He’s a dumbass,” he tells Widow.

Widow looks up from her book, stares at Steve, him, then grins.

“He is,” she agrees.

“What’s he saying? Nat?” Steve furrows his brow.

It’s kinda cute.

\--

Wow.

WOW.

Inappropriate  thoughts, Soldier.

\--

“I’m speaking in Russian to mess with you,” he tells Steve.

“What?” Steve stares at him.

Hawkeye snickers.

“Did he insult me,” Steve demands.

Widow’s shoulders are shaking as she laughs.

\--

Steve’s working out.

Wow.

WOW.

\--

“Wow,” he tells Widow.

Widow hums, stretching into an impossible position.

He stares at Steve.

“Why do you even wear a shirt,” he snaps angrily.

What a useless shirt. It hides nothing.

Hawkeye falls off the treadmill.

Steve pauses in his flexing.

“Nat? Translation?”

Widow gets up gracefully from the yoga mat, gazes at Steve, and-

-licks her lips.

Wow.

WOW.

Absolutely. Not.

He growls at Widow, who smirks at him.

“Oh my god,” Falcon says.

“I know, right?” Hawkeye nods.

Widow cocks her head and reaches an arm out to just squeeze Steve’s biceps.

Absoluely. NOT.

He growls again.

“Nat,” Steve hisses at her. He’s blushing.

Good, Steve, Boundaries. Away from Widow.

Black Widows eat the heads of their mates, Steve.

“Steve,” he growls at him, “come here.”

Steve stares at him.

His expression is not cute.

It’s NOT.

“He wants you to go over,” Hawkeye tells Steve.

Steve’s eyes widen. He trots over, obediently.

Wow. Useless shirt is useless, especially from up close.

Widow’s grinning at him.

Shut up, Widow.

Steve’s staring again.

It’s not cute.

It’s. Not.

\--

Steve’s on the couch, watching a terrible movie.

The Soldier snorts, and vaults over the couch onto Steve’s lap.

Steve yelps.

It’s not cute.

“Protection detail extends to protection against terrible 80s sitcoms,” he tells Steve.

“I have no idea what you just told me,” Steve said.

Right. Russian.

Well, he wasn’t changing it.

It wasn’t because Steve trying to understand Russian looked cute.

Because it didn’t.

And he wasn’t.

He changes the channel. Resident Evil is playing.

The Soldier stares at Steve. Steve stares back, blushing.

Right. Lap.

It’s… kinda nice.

The Soldier doesn’t move, anyhow.

“Protection detail extends to warming your cold feet,” The Soldier tells him.

It’s a lie. Steve gives out heat like a furnace.

“Okay, this is okay,” Steve says, like he understands.

He turns away, still blushing.

The Soldier watches him.

\--

The Soldier wakes up.

This is wrong, because he is not supposed to fall asleep on a mission but he did and-

-and Steve bats his hand lazily.

The Soldier stares at him.

Steve is drooling.

It’s not cute.

It’s NOT.

He stares at the television. It’s playing James Bond.

The Soldier assesses the situation.

He fell asleep with Steve. While on his lap.

Steve is still asleep.

He stands to get up, but Steve has an arm around him. He murmurs something.

The Soldier watches him, a little.

Then sinks down, onto Steve’s chest.

It’s hard, and not at all comfortable.

Steve’s arm tightens around his stomach.

It’s kinda nice, he supposes.

\--

Steve screams, and it takes three good whacks with his metal hand to break the toilet door.

The Soldier rushes in.

Steve screams, again.

Wow.

WOW.

“Oh my god,” Steve says.

“Oh my god,” Falcon says, higher pitched.

The Soldier turns and pounces.

Falcon shrieks and dashes out.

“Protection detail extends to protecting your virtue,” he tells Steve.

“Oh my god,” Steve says.

Wow.

WOW.

W O W.

Steve has a full body blush.

The Soldier stares, and his brain sort of-

“Oh my god,” Steve chokes.

The Soldier’s straddling him. How did that happen?

“You smell nice,” he tells Steve.

Steve blushes.

A hand brushes his thigh, and he just-

“Oh my god,” Steve shrieks. The Soldier feels a stinging slap.

Oh, Steve has a hickey.  Wonder how that happened?

Steve found a towel. Disappointing. He tells Widow that.

Hawkeye snorts inelegantly.

\--

“Protection detail,” he tells Steve, as he sits himself between his legs.

What an excuse.

“Is that the same word? You’re repeating the same word for everything you do. I hear it. He is, isn’t he, Nat?”

Widow snorts. “Yeah,” she pats Steve’s arm.

Steve starts to scratch his scalp. It’s nice.

Hawkeye saunters into the room.

The Soldier glares. Hawkeye is treading on thin ice, after throwing that fork.

“Protection detail,” he snarls.

Hawkeye nods, warily, cradling a healing arm.

“He said the word again. What does it mean?” Steve demands.

\--

It’s cold.

It’s cold and he’s crying and he wants to stop.

Steve is here, that’s good.

Steve is warm.

\--

It’s cold.

It’s so cold.

He wants Hydra to wipe him. It hurts.

It’s so cold.

It HURTS-

-but.

Steve is here.

Captain America is here.

No, wait-

-no, he wasn’t.

Where was Captain America when he got captured in the war?

Being a showgirl.

Hero, his ass.

The Soldier twists and kicks Steve square in the face.

Steve topples out of bed, and stares at the Soldier, wide eyed.

“You weren’t there,” he hisses, “don’t touch me.”

He’s crying.

“You stupid USO showgirl. They called you a hero and savior of Americans but I was one and I fell and you weren’t there!”

He’s screaming now.

“Nat, Natasha, Clint, Clint, Nat, come here, come here,” Steve’s stammering.

The Soldier hurls the closest thing. It’s a pillow.

“Nat, Clint, Bruce, anyone,” Steve is crying.

Why?

He doesn’t get to cry.

He throws something again. It’s a remote.

It draws blood.

“Consider this debt paid, Protect yourself.” he snarls.

He gets up to leave, maybe through the window, when Steve lunges at him.

“Fight me,” Steve snaps, “you want to fight me, I hear it in your words.”

The soldier does.

\--

“Oh my god,” Falcon screams.

“What the hell, guys? Cap? Popsicle? Grandpas?” Stark junior is screaming, too.

Widow curses softly.

“It’s okay, guys, he got it out of his system,” Steve tells them.

The Soldier stares at him.

Steve coughs out a wad of blood.

“I’m fine,” Steve says.

Stark junior glares at the Soldier, as he wheels Steve out on a stretcher. He glares back.

\--

“No harm done, right?” Steve tells him.

Hospital. Bed. IV drip.

It’s like the first day over again. Except Falcon is not here.

The Soldier is glaring at Steve.

“I’m fine. You okay?”

The Soldier glares harder.

“Sorry,” Steve tells him, as if he understands. He coughs, again.

“You’re such a dumb idiot,” The Soldier tells Steve.

There is a pause.

“War sucked, huh,” Steve murmurs.

Huh.

“Showgirl,” The Soldier spits. He cradles his injured arm.

There is a long pause, then, “I died,” Steve says.

“I remember every moment of it. I remember water rushing in, I remember wanting to live. I remember the very last thing I saw, the light, then the darkness.”

The Soldier stares.

“I wanted to be a hero,” Steve keeps talking, “I felt like one, in the war, hunting down Nazis. I felt like one when I single-handedly busted 300 people out of a concentration camp. But I didn’t manage to save everyone, huh,” he looks bitterly at the Soldier.

“The boys kept screaming, their sergeant was still trapped in. I searched the entire place, before it went up in flames. Nobody was there,” Steve says. “They insisted he was still alive, but if he had been, I thought we would have been burnt.”

“But he froze, instead, didn’t he,” Steve starts to cry again.

The Soldier smashes the window.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I should’ve searched harder, sorry,” Steve cries over the alarm blaring.

The Soldier’s breath hitched.

“You, stupid, dumbass,” The Soldier yells. He straddles Steve and starts hitting him, with a pillow.

“I’m sorry, sorry, sorry,” Steve repeats. Broken record.

“SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP,” The Soldier is shouting.

“Let him go!” Stark junior breaks in and has a glowing hand aimed at him, the Widow two pistols, Hawkeye his bow.

“Soldier, stand down,” Widow snaps, in Russian.

“SHUT UP,” The Soldier hurls the pillow at her, and collapses onto the bed like a dead weight, shivering.

“Guys, stop, stop, sorry,” Steve cries out. He wraps a protective, bandaged arm around the Soldier.

“It’s your fault, your fault,” The Soldier snaps. He’s crying again.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry,” Steve tells him, softer.  He latches onto Steve’s chest and burrows in there.

“What’s going on,” Falcon’s voice is distant.

Steve is warm.

\--

The Soldier wakes up, and realizes he’s on Steve again.

Steve is decked in bandages.

Shit.

Steve is spooning him.

Wow.

WOW.

He twists. The Widow is there, watching him.

“How are you feeling, Soldier?” She greets, coldly.

The Soldier doesn’t reply her. He chooses to burrow deeper in Steve’s arm, and glares at her from under a large bicep.

It’s nice.

And Steve is warm.

And it smells more of disinfectant and alcohol than Steve, but it will have to do.

“Jarvis told us who you were, once Steve figured it out, Sergeant,” WIdow says again, sharply.

The Soldier growls.

“Nat,” Steve reprimands, sleepily. He adjusts to shift the Soldier to his side, and tries to sit up.

The Soldier pins him down.

“He almost killed you, Steve,” Widow told him. She’s furious.

“It was my fault,” Steve tells her.

“No it wasn’t,” The Soldier murmurs.

It wasn’t.

Widow pauses, to look at him, then back at Steve.

“He says it’s not your fault,” WIdow translates, “listen to him if you won’t to me.”

“Nat, I” Steve starts again, but The Soldier reaches for a jello cup, pops the lid, then stuffs a spoonful of jello into Steve’s open mouth.

Steve chokes. Widow raises an eyebrow.

“Protection detail,” The Soldier says, mulishly. “Protection against starvation.”

“You said that word, again. It’s the same word.” Steve accused, “I can say it too.”

He does. It’s a terrible attempt. The Soldier slaps him lightly.

“Protection detail,” The Soldier repeats. “Protection against terrible pronunciation.”

Steve stares, wide eyed.

Widow sits back. She looks almost amused.

Her hands don't leave her gun, though.

Smart girl.

\--

“Protection detail,” The Soldier tells Steve, as he snatches his large bowl of cereal away.

He doesn’t give it back. The Soldier props himself on Steve’s lap and begins eating.

“Sure,” Hawkeye snorts.

“What’s he saying,” Steve pouts, “is it an insult? It is, isn’t it?”

Falcon looks up from his phone. “Oh my god.”

“What? Sam,” Steve demands.

“I’ve been using google translate,” Falcon tells him, grinning, “and speech-to-text.”

“What does that d-” Steve is abruptly cut off when the Soldier shoves a heaped spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

“Protection against stupid questions,” The Soldier tells him flatly, “It literally has the word translate in it’s name. And speech-to-text. Literally speech, to text. What do you think it does?”

“Oh my god,” Falcon says again, choking back on laughter. He tilts his screen towards Hulk, sitting at the back.

Hulk snorts into his tea. “Oh gosh,” he angles Falcon’s phone so Stark Junior can see it too.

Stark Junior spews coffee everywhere.

“Sam,” Steve snaps.

Hawkeye laughs, harder.

\--

A blond bigger than Steve shows up.

“Protection detail,” The Soldier announces, before sitting on Steve again. The room chuckles, at large, except for Steve and the blond, who looks confused.

“What is he saying,” Steve emphasises on each word.

Falcon shrugs.

“Greetings, Soldier of WInter,” the less-cute blond booms, “I am Thor of Asgard. I am pleased to make your acquaintance!”

The Soldier growls.

“I have heard that you have chosen the Captain to be your Shield Mate! A fine choice. May the nights be long and pleasurable!”

Shield mate? Was that a word for ally?

Well, The Soldier was doing protection detail, so he supposes it was like a shield?

The nights were pretty good. Steve’s been spooning him, ever since The Soldier beat him to the ground.

Steve is warm.

And cute.

Not that it matters.

But he is warm.

“It’s not like that,” Steve protests feebly.

What?

So they weren’t allies?

Thanks, Steve. That didn’t hurt at all. Especially all the time he spent protecting him?

Protecting.

Heh.

“We’re just friends,” Steve tells him, red.

Not allies, but friends? What did that even mean?

The Soldier twists to put himself under Steve, and then kicks him off the couch.

Steve crashes into the coffee table. It’s almost satisfactory.

“I’m… sorry,” Steve starts.

“You make no sense, you weirdo,” The Soldier tells him. He kicks again, for good measure, before stalking out the room.

The Soldier ends up on the gym floor. He huffs to himself, and starts pummelling the punching bags.

He goes through 4.

That night, Steve isn’t spooning him.

He wakes up, cold and screaming.

The Soldier pulls on one of Steve’s sweaters, that smells like Steve. It’s slightly comforting, but still cold.

Shit.

He pads into Steve’s room, before he remembers what happened the last time he was with Steve near a nightmare.

The Soldier falters, and almost steps back out, but Steve is awake.

“Did you have another nightmare?” Steve asks him.

The Soldier stares, and nods minutely.

“You want a hug?” Steve asks again.

The Soldier crushed your bones the last time this happened, Steve.

He shakes his head.

Steve looks at him sadly, then opens his arms, smiling softly.

Wow.

WOW.

The Soldier lunges, and curls up at Steve’s feet.

Steve is warm. That’s nice.

He thinks Steve presses a kiss to his forehead, That’s nice, too.

\--

“It’s nice to see you two have reunited,” Thor congratulates, “A lovers’ quarrel cannot last longer than a night in bed, yes?”

The Soldier pauses in his lasagna.

Lovers?

Was this what Shield mate meant?

He stared at Steve.

Wow.

WOW.

Suddenly his reaction made a lot more sense.

Ok then.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “Thor, you’re right.”

What?

Were they lovers now?

That was an interesting turn of events.

Steve’s smiling at him. Blushing.

Well then.

The Soldier slides out of his seat and onto Steve’s lap.  
Steve’s warm. Why is he always warm?

Not that the Soldier’s complaining, of course.

Steve adjusts his position, and the Soldier just melts into him, still holding the lasagna.

“That’s so domestic,” Stark Junior sighs.

Pepper Potts rolls her eyes at him.

Steve reaches around him to take a spoonful of lasagna. The Soldier slaps his hand away, but turns around to feed him.

“Protection detail,” he tells Steve.

Oh, who was he kidding?

“How are you, Soldier?” Widow asks. She sounds happy.

He thinks, “remember I told you that love was for children?”

Widow looks sad, “I was young then.”

The Soldier bats Steve’s hand away from the spoon again.

Lover. Huh.

Steve is so warm.

“I think I was wrong,” he tells her.

Widow smiles sadly. Hawkeye does, too.

The soldier briefly wonders if they had something between them, before.

\--

Steve gives him a hot kiss, on the lips.

Wow.

WOW.

The Soldier- no, James. He asked Steve to call him James, yesterday.

It is his name, after all.

Not because he likes the way Steve says it.

James ducks his head, and hides his face in the crook of Steve’s arm.

Wow.

Is he blushing?

He looks up, again, when he hears footsteps.

It’s the Avengers. They’re staring at him and Steve, smiling.

He hides his face again.

“How’s soldier-boy,” Stark Junior asks.

James looks up, and shoots him a half-hearted glare.

Steve’s fingers are in his hair. That’s nice.

“His name is James, he told me yesterday,” Steve tells them.

“How are you and James, then,” Pepper Potts asks politely.

James likes her. She’s nice.

“I’m wrong, about the love thing,” he tells her.

“Oh,” Widow breathes. She looks wistful.

“What did he say?” Steve asks.

“He says that he’s wrong,” Widow tells him. She looks content.

Hawkeye sighs, longingly. “Yeah,” he nods.

Steve smiles at him. “Huh, alright.”

James looks up, then to Widow, and Pepper Potts. He blinks, then lies back down.

Falcon looks up from his phone, smiling softly.


	3. The first time-

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From Steve's perspective, to see if I could.

The first time Steve meets The Winter Soldier, he’s furious and chases him across rooftops, but too shocked to do anything but stare as the shield slams into him.

He finds the abandoned base with Natasha and almost throws up.

\--

The second time Steve meets The Winter Soldier, he’s stunned by the soft grey-blue of his eyes and impressed with his prowess, but too angry to back down from this fight.

Zola’s words do echo in his head, the entire way.

\--

The third time Steve meets The Winter Soldier, he’s pulling a heavy metal beam off him with a bullet in his stomach, then dodging punches.

“You’re just a victim of Hydra,” Steve tells him, “I won’t fight you.”

“You’re my mission,” The Winter Soldier snarls at him.

\--

The fourth time Steve meets The Winter Soldier, he and Sam are engaged in a staring contest over his hospital bed.

“Oh, uh, hi, Soldier,” he greets, hesitantly.

The Winter Soldier stares at him.

He drinks the glass that The Winter Soldier has been not-subtly pushing towards him - any further and it would topple off the table, and turns when he hears the slight scrape of Sam’s chair across the floor.

“Sorry dude,” Sam says, “but he’s creepy.”

“He can hear you,” Steve says.

“He doesn’t care about his own dignity,” Sam sniffs self-righteously, “he only cares when I insult you. Watch.”

“Sam,” Steve starts.

“You’re a fucking asshole,” Sam snaps.

The Winter Soldier growls, deep.

“Told ya,” Sam pushes his chair further.

Steve gapes.

\--

The fifth time Steve meets The Winter Soldier, he bodily throws himself in Steve’s direction.

Steve shrieks. 

The Winter Soldier lands just short of Steve’s feet, and glares at him.

“You scared me,” Steve scolds. He cradles his coffee mug.

The Winter Soldier swipes his coffee, and snaps something at him in Russian, before downing the drink.

“You spoke english to me, before. Can’t you keep doing that?”

The Soldier mutters something, and hands the mug back.

It’s empty.

> The Winter Soldier: You just recovered. Protection Detail. No caffeine.
> 
> The Winter Soldier: Idiot.

\--

The s- okay, Steve doesn’t know. The Winter Soldier hasn’t left Steve’s side.

“Hey, buddy,” Steve nudges him, “how do you like your eggs?”

The Winter Soldier blinks at him, bearily. 

“It’s three-fucking-am in the morning,” Tony groans, “why are you awake?”

“Language,” Steve says, absent-mindedly, then, “why are you awake?”

“Science,” Tony dismisses his question.

“I’m awake to see if the Soldier will actually follow me everywhere,” Steve tells him.

“He followed you up 43 flights of stairs for you to break into my kitchen to cook eggs at ass-o-clock at night,” Tony tells him, taking a prepared plate of eggs, “I’m sure that’s conclusive.”

“Maybe I’ll keep doing this to see how long he can take it,” Steve muses.

The Winter Soldier narrows his eyes at Steve, who grins.

\--

The fifth time he sits in front of Tony at 3am, Pepper’s there, too.

“Steve,” she greets sleepily, nudging Tony before she heads to the bedroom.

“Just got in from her flight,” Tony says in explanation, “hows your late night cooking session?”

In response, The Winter Soldier throws an egg. It hits Steve on the face.

“I think we’re doing good,” Steve tells Tony.

“You’re an asshole,” Tony says. He sounds impressed.

The Winter Soldier groans, and throws another egg.  Steve reaches over to pat him on the head.

\--

The thirteenth time he sits in front of Tony at 3am, The Winter Soldier has abandoned all sense of personal space and has crawled into and started dozing in Steve’s arms.

It’s hard to make eggs like this.

The Winter Soldier is warm, and in all honestly, a pretty nice but heavy cuddle-buddy.

“He made me piggy-back him up at floor 73,” Steve says accusingly.

“You asked for it, honestly,” Tony yawns. 

\--

Steve is out with Natasha when she corners him with questions. 

“How’s the Soldier?” She asks.

“I told him that you would be capable of defending both of us and that he should just stay at the tower and take a nap,” Steve tells her. 

Natasha hums as she checks herself out in the mirror, “and do you think he is?”

“I saw him tailing us 6 blocks down,” Steve admits. “I think you should go with the previous dress. The cut’s better.”

Natasha thinks for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right,” she says, “this one makes me look fat.”

“Fat, but still pretty,” Steve teases, then, “can we pick some stuff out for The Soldier, too?”

“Sure,” Natasha says as she re-enters the fitting room, “he seems pretty comfortable wearing your clothes, I’d say.”

“Maybe,” Steve thinks he’s blushing slightly, “I think he’s hoarding my sweaters.”

“I bed he’s wearing one right now,” she emerges in the dark dress and spins.

“So gorgeous,” Steve sighs.

“Will you fuck me?” Natasha asks, distractedly.

“Sure,” Steve shrugs, “at least let me buy you dinner first.”

Natasha grins, “I don’t think the Soldier would like that.”

Steve looks down, flushed. “Yeah, well.”

“He seems pretty enamoured with you, what do you think about it?” Natasha waves the sales assistant down, “I want to wear this right now. Get me the check.”

“He’s okay, I guess. I mean,” Steve shrugs.

He’s cute, he doesn’t say, but he bets Natasha already knows.

“Steve,” Natasha turns to look up at him, “he gave you a hickey when you were naked in the shower. I’m surprised he didn’t just sit on your exposed dick and started humping your leg.”

“Natasha!” Steve exclaims, scandalized.

“Steven,” she sighs, “you could’ve just told me I’ve been setting you up with the wrong gender.”

“I’m bisexual,” Steve mutters, petulantly.

\--

The Winter Soldier glares at him from one end of the couch.

“I saw you tailing us,” Steve accuses.

The Winter Soldier scoffs. 

“You heard our conversation,” Steve sighs, “I got you some clothes.”

The Winter Soldier mutters something in Russian. 

“Yeah, fine, keep being like that,” Steve huffs at him, “I’ll put the clothes in my room, because you don’t wear anything that’s not out of my closet.”

The Soldier looks down at Steve’s stretched sweater and looks back up, almost guilty.

“Keep it,” Steve sighs, “and all the other six, too. One for each day of the week.”

He looks kinda cute in them, anyways.

> The Winter Soldier: Fuck me.

\--

The Winter Soldier jumps over the upturned table and lunges at Clint.

Clint shrieks.

“Goddammit,” Tony curses.

Bruce looks unruffled, stepping away from the splintered wood and poking into his salad.

Natasha saves the bowl of mashed potatoes and hops onto the counter. 

Steve grabs Pepper by the waist and hoists her onto the counter next to Natasha, passing her a plate of pasta before throwing himself bodily at The Winter Soldier and tackling him into the floor.

Clint barely dodges the speeding tangle of super soldier as he crashes into the couch.

The Winter Soldier growls and spits out a tirade of angry Russian, now underneath maybe 200 pounds of Steve Rogers.

Steve keeps him pinned, and drops his chin lightly onto The Winter Soldier’s head, one hand wrapped around said assassin’s torso and the other flipping the bird to Clint behind his back.

The Winter Soldier relaxes under his grip, but only slightly.

“Clint,” Steve scolds.

“Sorry,” Clint apologizes. It sounds muffled.

The Winter Soldier mutters something under his breath.

“No murder,” Steve sighs, and lays on top of the growling - in Bruce’s words, angry duckling.

It’s kinda nice.

“Oh my god,” Sam says.

> The Winter Soldier: (just a long string of swears, Get creative.)
> 
> The Winter Soldier: Lucky you’re cute, Steve.

\--

Steve’s crying.

The Soldier is shivering in a ball on his lap, lightly dozing.

Steve runs a hand in his hair.

“Hey, Jarvis?” He whispers.

“Captain Rogers,” Jarvis whispers back.

“Can you,” he hesitates, “help me search something?”

“Of course,” Jarvis whispers, “if we are to keep at this volume, I suggest a pair of earphones?”

Steve reaches for one.

“Can you…” Steve sighs, “do a facial recognition search for me? Of, uh, the Soldier, and of people who went missing in the war?”

Jarvis hums in his ear for a moment.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th regiment,” Jarvis tells him, “MIA and supposed KIA in the battle of Azzano.”

“Holy shit,” Steve curses. 

The Winter Soldier shifts, and cries out.

\--

Steve wakes up again, in the hospital bed.

It’s Natasha instead of Sam by his side, and The Winter Soldier on the other.

The Winter Soldier is sniffing into his blanket, tucked under his arm. Natasha is glaring.

“Nat,” he reprimands, he tries to sit up but The Winter Soldier presses his weight down.

“He almost killed you,Steve,” Natasha snaps.

The Winter Soldier sinks further into the sheets.

He’s terrified.

“It was my fault,” Steve tells her. “Azzano.”

The Winter Soldier says something in Russian. He sniffles.

> The Winter Soldier: No, it wasn’t.

\--

The Winter Soldier says something in Russian - it’s the same word, he repeats the word for everything he does - and plops down on his lap.

“This is okay,” Steve tells him.

The WInter Soldier huffs, and slides in between Steve’s arms.

“Greetings, Soldier of Winter,” Thor says, “I am Thor of Asgard. I am pleased to make your acquaintance!”

The Winter Soldier squints slightly at Thor and blinks.

“I heard you have chosen the Captain to be your shield mate!” Thor continues, oblivious, “A fine choice. May the nights be long and pleasurable!”

Oh dear god.

Long pleasurable nights?

If Steve didn’t know what shield mate meant, well, he could take a pretty wild guess.

He flushes deeply.

The Winter Soldier blinks at him, slightly confused.

“It’s not like that,” Steve starts. “We’re just… friends.”

The Winter Soldier huffs, and does an incredibly athletic and acrobatic display before kicking Steve face-first into the coffee table, before vaulting away.

Ouch.

“You should apologize, for putting your shield mate down like that, Captain,” Thor scolds, “It’s not right.”

Steve stares after The Winter Soldier.

“I will, Thor,” Steve tells him. 

He stalks the Tower, but The Winter Soldier is nowhere to be found.

Steve feels oddly empty.

And cold.

Was it always this lonely in the Tower?

He gives up, past midnight, and shuffles into his bed.

Which is way to large and empty for his taste.

He doesn’t fall asleep, which is why he hears the soft padding of feet on his carpet.

The Winter Soldier is standing, wide-eyed, at the doorway.

“I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” Steve whispers softly, knowing that The WInter Soldier could hear him anyways.

The Winter Soldier stares.

“But we’re really not like that, are we?” Steve asks.

The WInter Soldier looks sad.

Oh dear.

“Did you have another nightmare?” Steve murmurs.

The Winter Soldier nods, slightly, and Steve’s heart aches.

He feels a rush of air and the wind knocked out of him when The Winter Soldier all but leaps into his arms.

Steve pulls him in and holds him tight.

There’s a nice warm feeling settling at the bottom of his stomach as The Winter Soldier curls up and drops his forehead onto Steve’s shoulder.

“Hey there,” Steve murmurs.

The Winter Soldier sniffles.

Steve presses his lips to his hair.

He does hear Natasha step in, in the morning, but The Winter Soldier is pressed tightly to Steve’s chest and so Steve doesn’t move until she leaves, and even then it’s just to pull a blanket over their shoulders and cuddle again.

\--

“It’s nice to see that you two have reunited,” Thor says happily, “a lovers’ quarrel cannot last longer than a night in bed, yes?”

The Winter Soldier stares at Steve.

“Yeah, Thor, you’re right,” Steve tells him.

The Winter Soldier hops onto Steve’s lap and burrows himself there.

That’s nice.

Steve wraps an arm around his stomach and another reaching for the spoon, but it get slapped away. 

The Winter Soldier huffs and turns to feed him.

“That’s so domestic,” Tony sighs.

Steve’s ears are burning. He presses a kiss to The Winter Soldier’s temple.

Natasha says something to The Winter Soldier.

The Winter Soldier says something back, curling protectively around his pot of food.

Natasha has a strange look on her face as she replies.

Clint looks between them.

The Winter Soldier tells her something again, and sits back into Steve.

Natasha looks sad, and content.

“Oh Steve,” Clint sighs.

> Natasha: How are you, Soldier?
> 
> The Winter Soldier: Remember I told you that love was for children?
> 
> Natasha: I was young then.
> 
> The Winter Soldier: I think I was wrong.

\--

“James,” The Winter Soldier says one day, out of the blue. He’s sitting on the foot of Steve’s bed.

“Hm?” Steve looks up, his fingers on The Winter Soldier’s hair.

“My name,” James says, voice slow and hesitant.

In english.

Steve feels his heart flutter.

“Oh,” he says, “ok then. James?”

James blinks at him, and says something in Russian.

“Are we back to Russian then,” Steve grins, and tugs James into his arms.

James grins at him.

> James: I like the way you say my name.

\--

The fifty-sixth time he sits in front of Tony at 3am, James is the one cooking eggs.

“This,” Tony gestures to the room at large, “I’m not okay with this.”

“It is pretty shoddy decorating,” Steve agrees.

“You know, Capsicle, you’re not as funny as you think you are,” Tony tells him, huffing, “you have your own kitchen, you know. It’s on the floor I gave you. I pay people money to keep your kitchen stocked and pretty. I pay people a lot of money, to keep your kitchen stocked and pretty. Money that's going to waste because you use mine instead of yours. You don't like wasting money, do you? Depression-era upbringing and all.”

“It’s a thing to come to your kitchen to cook now,” Steve says, "our thing."

“What, a sex thing?” Tony demands, “because that’s a weird kink, man. All those times you came up here? Was that some 1940s-esque foreplay?”

James looks tired as he slides onto Steve’s lap with the frying pan in his metal arm, but manages to shoot Tony a lewd grin, anyways.

Tony gets up to leave.


	4. When it *actually* starts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or: Sam's POV

It starts, Sam thinks, not on the hospital bed or in the Tower or anywhere anyone else might think.

It starts, Sam realises, when Steve casually hands The Soldier one of his large oversized sweaters, saying, “hey, you look cold. Put this on, I’ll go get something in your size later.”

And it’s so painfully Steve, that nobody else deems it out of the ordinary, and the Avengers (Sam can hardly believe it himself, sometimes he shrieks internally when he sees Hawkeye walk into the room, but tell nobody that) carry on with their lives - there’s Natasha flipping the page on her e-book and Tony munching on some berries as he goes through a blueprint, Clint’s dozing in the sun on the windowsill and Bruce has his earphones on while he flicks through the news on his Starkpad.

But Sam sees it - The Soldier’s eyes widen, he gingerly reaches for the soft fleecy material that Steve is still holding out, and The Soldier turns the sweater in his arms several times, just rubbing at the fabric between his fingers in innocent awe that Sam feels so hurt, until The Soldier hugs said sweater and brings it up to cover his face in a child-like manner.

Steve enters the room again (Sam didn’t realise that he left, watching The Soldier) and drops what he’s holding into The Soldier’s lap. It’s a large bundle of blankets and bedsheets.

The Soldier looks up but still has his face largely buried in Steve’s sweater, and Sam thinks he may or may not have cried in it, judging by the slight dampness on the cloth and the redness at the corner of The Soldier’s eyes.

Steve flings himself onto the couch and starts arranging the cloth until he fashions a makeshift nest with him and The Soldier snuggled in the centre.

Sam faintly registers this as one of the times The Soldier lets Steve leave the room without him, but he’s caught up in following The Soldier’s wide-eyed, confused gaze as Steve hums a song in another language, puttering around his little blanket nest and throwing one of the couch pillows onto The Soldier’s lap.

The Soldier still has Steve’s sweater in his face, and his eyes look shinier than usual, Sam thinks.

Steve finally settles down next to The Soldier, and wraps them both on what Sam recognizes as the quilt that Steve picked out himself from a thrift store, telling Sam that it felt homey in ways that commercial white sheets never would. Steve pulls out his Stark-pad and his earphones, holds one out to The Soldier and puts on some silly youtube video that has him chuckling and pulling The Soldier in one of those swing-an-arm-around-your-girl tricks that Sam hasn’t pulled in the movie theatre since high school.

And The Soldier sort of just sinks into Steve, letting Steve tuck him under his shoulder and continues to smush Steve’s sweater into his nose. 

Steve misses the look The Soldier gives him, but Sam doesn’t  - there are no words to describe it, but it sends a warm tingling down to Sam’s toes and makes him want to call Momma Wilson and visit Riley’s grave and maybe give every passer-by he sees a large bear-hug or two. 

And Sam thinks, this is when it really starts, when The Soldier really falls in love.

\--

Ask Sam about Steve, though, and he wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly *when*, because he wasn’t present at that exact moment.

But Steve meets him at the local Starbucks one day, there’s a certain glow in his eyes and in his smile and there’s some strange skip in Steve’s step that makes Sam’s heart beat funny. His smile rolls on his lips in a way that Sam has never seen on him before, and there’s maybe a light dusting of bright colour on his cheeks as Steve tells him that The Soldier’s probably tailing them several blocks down.

That’s when Sam really knows,

He doesn’t ask Steve about it, though, and watches with a small happy smile as it just shines through Steve, who seems to take in the 21st century with some new colour in his eyes and breathes in the dirty air like it was any fresher than yesterday and bounces on the tip of his heels with something in his smile like the drug called Love.

\--

He gets one of those things, a Stark audio auto-translator that he gets a huge discount on the moment his card is scanned, and he’s sure the cashier doesn’t know why but doesn’t question it.

It’s small enough, tucked on the inside of his ear that Bruce and Tony themselves miss it, Natasha and Clint and The Soldier don’t but they don’t question it either, just accept it like it had always been there, even though he gets a questioning look from Clint and Natasha raises her eyebrow just a tiny bit more when she meets him.

Steve tilts his head and taps the side of his ear, and Sam just shrugs, and says, “21st century technology,” and dismisses Steve like he wouldn’t understand, of course teasingly.

Steve shoots him a dirty look, and settles down on his favorite spot on the couch.

The Soldier saunters in, eyes barely glancing over Sam and Clint and Natasha and Bruce and Tony and Pepper and instantly trotting over to his favorite spot on the couch, also known as next-to-Steve.

Steve instinctively snakes an arm around The Soldier, and Sam’s almost impressed at the fluidity of how The Soldier responds in turn, letting the side of Steve’s hand settle at the top of his stomach as he presses into Steve’s side like the other piece of a puzzle, dropping his head under Steve’s chin.  

Natasha discreetly glances over, Sam only notices because she makes a point to catch his eye and then raises an eyebrow, almost amused.  

Sam raises an eyebrow back, but it’s not as subtle as Natasha and catches Steve’s gaze, who looks between them like there’s something that they’re not getting. The Soldier huffs and gently headbutts Steve when the latter stops whatever he’s doing to The Soldier’s hair, and it reminds Sam of an overly affectionate cat with the way the Soldier’s both stretched out and plastered to Steve as much as possible without actually sitting on the guy.

There’s something warm curling around his stomach, Sam finds, and he misses Riley so much that it almost hurts. Clint settles next to him, their knees pressing as he digs into a bowl of cereal, and Sam thinks that Riley left a hole in his heart that nobody else will fill, but another part in his heart that he never knew was empty is warming.

He glances over to The Soldier, eyes closed as Steve absently scratches his scalp.

\--

The audio translator crackles to life as The Soldier blurts out an angry string of Russian.

“Come on,” Steve is saying to The Soldier’s indignant string of swears, which the translator obediently relates and promptly scars Sam’s innocence forever.

The Soldier snaps another list of words, most vulgar, but Sam hears the infamous “protection detail” somewhere, as well as a few fond “idiots.”

From what he gathers, Sam figures that Steve’s foolassery and hero complex has gotten his patriotic star-spangled butt into some shit again. Not highly dangerous shit of any sort, Sam notes the lack of injuries of any kind including Winter-Soldier-inflicted, but apparently concerning enough that Steve looks appropriately chagrined in a knitted sweater and sweatpants as the Soldier berates him with a large teddy bear in his arms and duckling-print socks which he is almost certain that Tony had got. 

“But,” Steve starts, and falls silent as The Soldier curses another storm, before flinging the bear into Steve’s face and storming off,

It’s the second time that Steve has made the Soldier storm off in anger, Sam notes, the first resulting in the confirmation of their official boyfriend-boyfriend relationship status.

Steve looks slightly heartbroken. He hugs the bear to his chest.

“I won Buckybear for him at Coney Island,” Steve says sadly. 

Sam doesn’t comment. He wants to, really, but he doesn’t.

\--

Sam still isn’t sure what their fight was about, really, and judging from the looks on the other guys' faces, they didn’t know either. Pepper still has her cool on, as does Natasha, and Sam really isn’t willing to bet on how much they know. Pepper is a formidable businesswoman in her own right and can call Sam’s bluff on things he didn’t know he was bluffing on if she wanted, as she did to probably many other businessmen with wandering eyes and hands. Sam refuses to think about Natasha at all.

But as Thor eloquently put it, something about a night in bed and blissful passionate reunion puts an argument in the past. It seems that dear Steve has won his way back into his honey’s heart, with the way that The Soldier has what one would consider a sappy love-stricken smile for his standards on his face as he hugs Buckybear close to him, and Steve happily braiding The Soldier’s hair with a multitude of colourful pins and bands that Sam was sure some of which were Pepper’s. 

Steve does pause, and when The Soldier looks up worriedly, he reaches over to press a soft chaste kiss to the side of The Soldier’s temple, grinning like a man whipped by his darling and in love. The Soldier seems mollified, somewhat, and pushes his nose into his teddy bear, grinning happily.

“That’s so domestic,” Tony sighs happily. It really is. Sam feels something happy in the bottom of his stomach, and he stands up determinedly, phone brandished in his hand and ready to dial his Momma’s number and maybe cry into the phone screen for a while.

\--

And it takes a while, of course, for the team to get used to calling The Soldier James, but Steve seems to take it in stride and as does James.

James hums a soft tune, one that Natasha recognizes because she sings along softly, as he clutches Buckybear in one hand and Steve’s in another as they sit on the couch. Buckybear has a domino mask on, made of jagged-cut black felt and velcro strips.

James seems content letting Natasha perch on the couch behind him and pin his hair up in increasingly ridiculous ways, as they swap what seems to be cordial insults in Russian, that is, until Sam turns the audio translators on.

“-and his ass,” Natasha is saying, “that uniform does wonders.”

“It’s a very round ass,” James is telling her, “like a peach.”

“Oh my god,” Sam says, and Steve does glance over momentarily, but then turns back to the television.

“I’m almost jealous of his tits,” Natasha sighs dreamily.

“They’re really nice and large,” James agrees, “he loves it when I play with them.”

“His lips too,” she sighs again, “I’ve kissed him once, and I’d like to do it again, really. He’s not a great kisser, per say, but his enthusiasm and the softness of those lips more than makes up for it.”

James doesn’t seem perturbed by that, instead nodding solemnly.

“His abs are so finely cut,” James tells her seriously, “thank the serum.”

“Thank the serum,” Natasha echoes, “amen.”

\--

Sam finds Steve and James hunched over Steve’s laptop, arguing in different languages.

“Bullshit,” James is saying in Russian, “there’s no way you could have been that kid.”

“I was totally that kid! I know you don’t believe me,” Steve retorts in english, “all small and sickly before the serum!”

“I remember that kid,” James says again in Russian, “I lived several streets down from him and we used to go to the same elementary school!”

“That was me!” Steve protests, “I’m not lying!”

“Steve,” Sam starts, “do you even know what James is saying?”

“I don’t have to understand to know that James thinks I’m pulling one over him,” Steve sniffs self-righteously.

“I went to that kid’s funeral once!” James says.

“That was me!” Steve turns to him again.

“He said he went to your funeral once,” Sam translates. Steve blinks once, twice.

“First, since when do you know Russian? And second, was it the funeral I had when I was 5, 9, or 13 years old?”

James looks horrified, and it would be hilarious if Sam wasn’t as horrified as well.

“You died thrice before the serum?” Sam shrieks, almost, because he doesn’t shriek.

“No,” Steve says, hesitates, then shrugs, “maybe.”

James looks distinctly worried, and he pushes the laptop aside to straddle Steve’s lap and put the back of his hand on Steve’s forehead like he’s taking his temperature.

“I’m fine,” Steve pushes his hand away but looks fond, “serum, remember?”

James doesn’t look appeased.

\--

Sam finds Steve and James again.

He also finds Tony, trying not to laugh and failing whenever he glances in Steve’s general direction.

“Don’t say a word,” Steve says.

“Of course not,” Sam says smoothly. He takes the seat across Steve, and manages to keep his cool for approximately 3 seconds, before bursting into laughter. Steve looks as petulant as a super soldier wrapped in a Captain America duvet and fuzzy iron-man print socks would.

“I approve,” Sam nods.

“Stop encouraging him,” Steve hisses, then turns to James, who is steadily ignoring Steve while he scrolls through his Starkpad, holding the former down with 200 pounds of supersoldier.

“I run hotter than a furnace, James,” Steve snaps, and James ignores him some more.

“I’m not going to die from pneumonia in the summer of Manhattan,” Steve tries again, and James looks up from his tablet to narrow his eyes at Steve. 

Sam sneaks a peek. The tab open is Steve’s wikipedia page, listing all the symptoms that Steve had suffered from before the serum. It is a very long list.

James turns back to the page, scrolling.

“I can’t help you there man,” Sam tells Steve, who burrows deeper into his duvet and sighs.

\--

“So,” Sam asks, when Steve’s alone and James is somewhere with Clint in the tower, “what’s with Buckybear?”

“He’s James’ teddy bear,” Steve says, “I won it for him that one time we went to Coney Island.”

“Why Buckybear?” Sam wonders aloud, and Steve pauses, before he sets his sketchbook aside and sighs.

“His old unit, the 107th? The survivors called him Bucky. Said that their sergeant may have had a stupid nickname, but he was the bravest man they’ve met and the reason they’re alive.”

Sam thinks for a moment.

“I guess,” Steve’s gaze drops, “I don’t know. James seems to like the name, I mean, I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me man,” Sam tells him.

“Thanks, Sam,” Steve smiles sadly, then shakes his head and grins again, wider, “Buckybear’s cute, anyhow. Squishy. James likes carrying him around, like a little kid. A safety blanket? Brings him to bed, too.”

“I’d bet Buckybear’s seen more bedroom activities than he needs to,” Sam says, and Steve’s face turns beet red.

“We haven’t actually, uh,” Steve murmurs, and Sam drops his cup.

“You guys haven’t,” Sam says, and pauses, then makes an obscene gesture.

“Samuel Wilson!” Steve cries out, scandalized, then shakes his head, “nothing more than cuddling, and uh, some petting?”

“Oh my god,” Sam says, because honestly? He can’t believe it. They’re so attached at the hip that you’d think that Steve has gotten or given some dick, but no, they’ve stayed true to their old-timer traditional no-sex-before-marriage 1940s thing and done nothing naughty below the waist. Steve knows that this kind of thing is acceptable now, right? People have one night stands. Did they not have one night stands in the 1940s? Sam was sure they did.

“Is this a 1940s thing,” Sam demands.

“We’ve had sex in the 1940s,” Steve huffs, “you guys didn’t invent sex, you know.”

“That doesn’t mean little Stevie Rogers got any,” Sam teases, then, “then what’s stopping you two?”

“We just haven’t brought it up,” Steve shrugs.

Sam finds that hard to believe. Very hard to believe.

“A month into knowing you and he gave u a hickey while you were naked in the shower, Steve,” Sam reminds him, and gets a pillow to his face for his efforts.

“Are either of you, you know,” Sam starts, pauses, then tries again, “incapable?”

“Um, no,” Steve says, face burning.

He looks so embarrassed and troubled that Sam decides to drop it.

\--

Until, that is, Steve comes for their jog one day with tousled hair and a flushed face and the grin of a man that just had a very nice long fuck. Sam knows that look very well.

“So,” Sam starts, before Steve runs too far for him to catch up, “who tops?”

Steve doesn't reply, but he does flip Sam the bird behind his back as he laps him the second time.

The third lap, Steve says, “we switch,” instead of “on your left,” and Sam promptly trips over his feet.

He hears Steve’s laughter trailing off in the distance, and Sam’s too dazed to do anything but laugh.

“Poor Buckybear,” he mutters to himself.

He imagines Buckybear sighing and nodding in agreement, before deciding that he’s been spending too long with the Avengers.

He blames Steve.


	5. Cake flavors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because nobody expects Pepper's POV.

Pepper meets James when she walks in on him digging around in her kitchen at 3.30am in the morning.

“Hi James,” she greets cordially, and James looks at her with wide eyes, reminding her very much like a kid caught with his hand in a cookie jar just before dinner. The fact that James did have a hand down an actual jar which she coincidentally kept cookies in was unrelated, but it sure helped fuel that mental image.

“Hi, Miss Pepper Potts,” James whispers softly in english, and his voice is a meek and unsure and completely different from what Pepper was expecting, possibly because of James’s dubiously shadowed past and assassin-esque vibe that he gave off, despite the fact that he was in one of Steve’s sweaters, as usual, and duckling-print socks that she was sure Tony specifically ordered (the left wing of each duckling was silver and red, after all) yet James was fond off all the same.

Pepper blinks.

On closer inspection, James strikes her more like a wounded animal curling into itself than a feral beast. James is hunched and looking much smaller than a man of his stature and abilities should be, hand retreating from the cookie jar and guiltily shuffling his feet. His awed and naive dear-in-the-headlights expression is different yet as effective as Steve’s labrador-of-justice doe eyes, and Pepper just smiles softly.

“Would you join me for a late-night snack, James?”

James pauses and regards her for several long beats, before nodding so slightly that Pepper wasn’t sure if she didn’t imagine it.

“Can you get the milk from the fridge, James?” She asks, and he blinks for another beat before practically stumbling to the refrigerator and grabbing the carton of milk.

She fetches two glasses and two plates from under the kitchen island and sets them down, watching from the corner of her eye as James pauses, hesitates, then starts pouring milk steadily into one glass.

He doesn’t pour the milk into the second glass, though, and maybe Pepper’s heart breaks a little.

“I’m not sure if there is enough milk, James. If you need more, fetch it from the fridge, yes?” She calls out from the cupboards where she is pretending to look busy, and she sees James stare for slightly too long at the empty glass before starting to fill up the second glass, much slower than the first.

She finally sits across him, getting nothing from the cupboards and no doubt arousing suspicion, but she holds her head high and takes a cookie for herself.

“Where’s Steve?” She asks, and James’s gaze flickers from the cookie in her hand to the milk in his glass, then sighs.

“On a mission,” he murmurs sadly.

She nudges the cookie jar slightly towards James but he gets the message and takes a cookie.

“Tony’s in Wakanda for a technology trade meeting,” Pepper tells him, “not something I understand, honestly. I handle the business part but science goes over my head.”

James nods and hums, enough to let Pepper know that he’s listening somewhat, so she continues.

“Well, what really matters is that Tony and I work well as a team,” she says, “it doesn’t matter that we don’t fully understand each other sometimes. What really does matter is that we trust each other and know that we will do our best in our own element and move forward together.”

Pepper’s not entirely sure what she’s talking about, anymore, but James is staring at her with a considering look on his face.

“I,” he starts, pauses, then, “I trust Steve.” He says it first, almost confused, but Pepper notices he repeats it under his breath and then sit up a little straighter, like he finally believes his own words even though Pepper is sure he never doubted them in the first place.

“That’s good,” she tells him, and reaches over to pat his hand lightly.

It’s his metal hand and James eyes widen at the contact, and Pepper briefly wonders how many people have touched James in a manner to offer comfort and not pain.

She thinks she can count out these people on her fingers, and she smiles sadly.

James detects the change in her demeanor and droops a little. Pepper supposes he wasn’t the most notorious assassin for the better part of a century for nothing. James and Natasha and Clint have inhuman levels of detecting the slightest change in atmosphere.

“When’s Steve coming back?” She asks, hoping to change the subject, and James seems slightly distracted as he thinks before replying, equally soft, “I dunno.”

“I think,” Pepper says, considering, “that while Steve and Tony are away, we should use this week to give them a surprise when they get back. How about that?”

James blinks. He cocks his head.

“We could plan a party,” Pepper suggests, “just the Avengers, and get some Asgardian mead from Thor. It’s the only thing that can get Steve drunk. Hilarious, really.”

“Really?” James asks, slightly curious.

“Really.” Pepper nods, “whaddya say? Party planning? Drunk Steve?” James has a faraway look in his eyes and he nods excitedly, no doubt already picturing a drunk Steve stumbling through a maze of couches and warbling an unidentifiable tune before tipping over the 70th floor balcony onto the 68th.

Which was what happened the last christmas party when the eggnog was mixed with Thor’s mead, but that wasn’t the point.

The point was, James looks excited at the prospect of planning a party and getting his honey drunk and Pepper has seen James happy, but this is the second time he looks genuinely excited about an event that is about to happen.

The first was when Steve crashed Bruce and Bucky’s meditation session and loudly announced his date plans for tomorrow which included, in Steve’s words, “Coney first, we didn’t ride all the rides last time. Dinner at the nice Italian buffet place we passed by last time, and then back to the amusement park or the bedroom where your next and only ride left is this dick-HOLY FUCK SHIT uh, hi, Bruce. I’ll just, go now.” Tony set the recording as Steve’s ringtone for a week, until Steve hurled it out the 54th floor of Avengers Tower when someone tried calling him in front of some very important people. In all honesty, it was hilarious.

“Other than alcohol,” Pepper says, “what do you think we should have at a small party?”

James thinks, and Pepper waits.

“Steve likes cake,” he finally says, and Pepper smiles.

“Do you know what kind?”

“Chocolate,” James says automatically, “dark.”

“Ok then. What about you?”

James opens his mouth, pauses, then closes it. He blinks once, twice, and then looks noticeably distressed.

“Whatever,” Pepper says loudly, “I don’t quite remember either, to be honest. Let’s have a cake-tasting session tomorrow. We’ll find both our favorite flavours tomorrow, how about that?”

James blinks again, and pauses for several beats, before smiling pleasantly. It’s a good look on him.

“Okay, Miss Pepper Potts,” he finally says, more cheerful and still as soft as eariler tonight, and Pepper gives herself a mental pat on the back.

\--

The chefs bustle around her, arranging serving portions of cake and artfully adding dashes of gold leaf as James stands behind her, wide-eyed and curious.

The chefs give them wide berth. Pepper is vaguely aware that James, nibbling on a fork, is and looks very much as threatening as the assassin he is, and is positioned like her bodyguard at parade rest.

James, on the other hand, seems rather at ease with people avoiding him.

The chefs finally scatter, and Pepper pulls out a chair and motions for James to sit across her.

“Try everything,” she says, “I’m going to take a small bite of each but I won’t be able to eat much. Normal human, after all.”

James nods, still staring in awe at the vast array of plates. Pepper thinks there are a hundred slices of cake.

She takes a small bite of passionfruit and watches James take a small and hesitant nibble of something dark, then look up at her with an astonished expression. She gestures at him to continue eating and he gasps dramatically, before proceeding to inhale the entire plate, leaving a small bite for herself.

She finds herself smiling as James excitedly reaches for the next one and then the next, almost vibrating in glee as he eats more cake.

Pepper has never seen Steve on a sugar high, but James’s expression, on his 50th slice,  tells her that supersoldiers might be able to get on one.

“James,” she calls out, and James pauses with a fork in his mouth, looking guilty.

“Remember to tell me your favorite flavor,” she says, and grins as James’s gaze flickers to the plates that he have eaten, then the others he have not.

“Okay, Miss Pepper Potts,” he replies, sounding sheepish and giddy and yet again as soft but with an obvious happy lilt to his tone.

She briefly wonders, while chewing on on a bite of bubblegum sponge cake, about the difference between James speaking in english and russian. Somewhere she recalls learning about how multilingual speakers adopt different personalities in different languages, and she figures that Russian James with quick and hasty and confident tone was the James with Winter Soldier in him, strong and independent and ready to take on the world, literally. English speaking James was the original Sergeant Barnes attempting to reinvent himself in the new world, small and unsure and curious like a child.

That, however, didn’t explain, at all, why James spoke solely in russian to Steve.

Pepper had heard him speaking in english to pretty much all the other Avengers, even Natasha who was a native russian speaker, as long as they were not in Steve’s presence.

“James, do stop me if it’s too personal,” she starts, and James swallows his 67th slice.

“Why do you speak in russian to Steve?”

James blinks at her once, twice, then grins in a grin that Pepper dare say is mischievous, reminding her of Tony just before he causes another PR fiasco.

“It’s funny when he can’t understand me,” James tells her cheekily, “and he’s cute trying to understand russian.”

He takes another bite and giggles, and Pepper finds herself laughing because that was not the answer she expected, at all.

“Steve,” James continues, drunk in cake and sappiness, “is very cute. His nose does the scrunchy thing when he’s confused.”

“The scrunchy thing,” Pepper echoes. She shares James’s sentiments.

“The scrunchy thing,” James agrees.

It is at this moment Clint wanders in, raises an eyebrow, and James noticeably lights up.

“Sniper bro,” Clint drawls, and then holds out a closed fist non-threateningly towards James. “Do the thing we practiced.”

James gingerly reaches out and gives Clint a soft fist bump, but it’s enough to make the latter beam and the former smile shyly in response.

“Fist bump,” James sings lightly in response, then sits up and looks very much like a puppy who had just caught a ball.

“Hey Pep,” Clint greets, pulling out a chair, “what’s with the cakes?”

“We’re trying to find mine and James’ favorite flavours,” Pepper says, “for a party.”

“Party,” Clint’s eyes light up.

“For when Steve and Tony get back,” Pepper tells him, “we’re going to get Asgardian mead from Thor.”

Clint lets out a long low whistle. “Drunk Steve groped my ass and made out with Bruce, remember? Ah, good times.”

James looks up from his 73rd slice of cake and drops the fork, suddenly intrigued.

“Oh yeah,” Clint says and nods to James, gesticulating wildly as he takes a bite of cake, “JARVIS, pull out the tape. The Christmas party? Drunk Steve?”

JARVIS hums and projects a video onto the blank wall behind them.

Pepper is greeted by the sight of the communal floor decked out in tinsel and mistletoe, and Projector-Tony popping champagne.

 

> The cork flies into Projector-Thor’s ear, who bats it away like a minor inconvenience. The supersoldier in question, Projector-Steve, is draped over Sam’s lap and pleasantly tipsy.
> 
> “Brucey-bear,” Projector-Steve trills happily, “you’re under mistletoe.”
> 
> “I’m under mistletoe by myself,” Projector-Bruce blinks, startled, and Projector-Sam snorts in his glass of eggnog.
> 
> “Noooooo,” Projector-Steve whines, “you’re still under mistletoe. You gotta k-i-ss! Come here Brucey-Bruce.”
> 
> Projector-Bruce stands there, blinking rapidly, and Projector-Tony takes the glass of champagne out of his hand and herds Projector-Bruce into Projector-Steve’s arms where he receives a large sloppy kiss on the lips.
> 
> Projector-Bruce looks dazed and flushed appropriately.

Pepper understands. She had expected Steve to give a demure peck on the cheek.

 

> Projector-Steve collapses, giggling into Sam’s lap, “Sammy! Nattie! I kissed Brucey-Bruce!”
> 
> “You sure did, Steve,” Projector-Natasha humors, talking into her vodka bottle and patting Steve’s leg from the other end of the couch.
> 
> Projector-Bruce is wide-eyed and murmuring something to himself, and Projector-Pepper pats him on the shoulder. Projector-Clint is laughing, and then abruptly jumps maybe 3 feet when Projector-Steve leans over the couch and gives him a very long ass-squeeze.
> 
> “I approve,” Projector Steve solemnly states, before dissolving into hiccups and giggling over Sam.

“Oh god,” Clint says, “Good memories.”

James is staring enraptured at the projector. When he turns back around, Pepper sees him bright-eyed and amused, with a silly grin on his face.

“We need to get Steve drunk,” James announces, softly and determined and Clint stands up to give James another fist bump from across the table.

\--

“Hey Pep, darling,” Tony sighs across the screen.

“Tony,” Pepper greets, “how’s Wakanda?”

“Great. Amazing. Wonderful. Better with you here. The tech is the best. T’challa - that’s the prince, Prince T’challa wants to meet our famed soviet Cap’s cyborg boyfriend and said boyfriend’s arm. Great service, nice hotel room,” he gestures to the wide expanse of his room, “how’s your life?”

Pepper shrugs. Behind her, Natasha bounds and leaps heavily at Bruce, tackling him to the floor.

“It’s going well. We’re having loads of fun without you,” Pepper tells him brightly. There’s a crash somewhere to her left, and Tony can see James run past with Sam clinging onto his back like a limpet and screaming.

Tony nods, craning his neck to see Clint sprawled over Bruce, and Natasha cackling as she sits on both of them.

“Great talk,” he tells Pepper, “be back tomorrow.”

\--

Pepper walks in later that day, on Thor sprawled on her couch, Natasha across him, James seated cross-legged next to her, and Clint dealing them in a game of cards.

“Hi Miss Pepper Potts,” James greets softly, and Thor looks up to beam at her and wave dramatically.

“Lady Pepper,” he booms, the complete opposite of James, “I have been informed of the gathering and feast you wish to hold to commemorate Friend Steven’s merrymaking!”

“Is that right,” Pepper murmurs into her cup of coffee, and James nods eagerly as Clint almost falls off his couch. 

“I have taken it upon myself to bestow upon your chefs the recipes for the finest dishes in Asgard,” Thor tells her proudly, “and have stocked your shelves with the grandest selection of liquor from my land.”

“We should make it a onsie party,” Natasha says, and then shrugs when Pepper and Clint and James turn to look at her.

“It’s going to be cute and funny,” she insists. “It kinda will,” Clint nods, at the same time as James when he sighs rather dreamily and hugs Buckybear and agrees that “Steve is so cute.”

Clint snorts inelegantly.

“Leave the decorations to me, Pep,” Clint says, and James tells Natasha softly that neither he nor Steve had a onesie.

“He totally did,” Natasha insisted, “have you seen his old Captain America uniform?”

James slowly shakes his head and JARVIS dutifully flashes crunchy shots of Steve running around in soft pyjamas across various stages in America. Pepper remembers Tony teasing Steve about them, and Steve groaning and flinging a couch pillow.

“Oh my god,” James says softly, eyes wide with mirth, and Natasha pats him on the back.

“Friend Steven’s armor seems to be highly impractical, but it serves it’s purpose,” Thor observes, as Projector-Steve sends a fake punch and sends flying Projector-Hitler.

“It’s with the Smithsonian right now,” Pepper says, feeling slightly mischievous, “but I can pull some strings if you want to see him in it.”

James, eyes affixed on the screen with an expression of glee, nods enthusiastically. Natasha bangs her hands on the table and demands Clint to finish dealing the cards. Thor laughs.

\--

Tony greets Pepper with a large exaggerated kiss and plucks her from the ground and twirls her around the room with his hands on her waist and James pauses from his cookie to look at them thoughtfully.

“He still comes round at 3am without Steve?” Tony says, even though the answer is right there, and Pepper nods.

James pulls out a third plate and pours Tony some milk, and Tony takes a seat.

\--

When Steve comes back, James greets him with a large exaggerated kiss and plucks him from the ground and twirls him around the room with his hands on Steve’s waist.

“Wait a minute,” Tony squints at them. Pepper reaches over to pat his shoulder consolingly..

James says something in russian happily.

“Nice to see you too, James,” Steve grins at him, and Natasha fake-gags in the background.

“Steve! James, show him the thing we practiced,” Clint demands, and James fist-bumps him.

“Nice,” Clint says, then gives Steve a fist-bump too.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Steve says, and Pepper notices that he’s banged up and dirty and in a tactical uniform, “you guys should hang around. I’ll be quick.”

“Take your time,” Sam says, and the moment Steve disappears into his room, everyone springs up.

Natasha gesticulates wildly and Clint digs into the air vents to pull out streamers that Pepper never knew was there, Bruce ushers the chefs in to lay out Asgardian dishes and human food and too much alcohol. Tony stands there impressed, Sam pulls out a second table for the cakes, and Thor trips over the couch.

There’s a short pause as the couch tips over and falls noisily, and Steve’s door opens again and his voice carries out a question that sounds vaguely like “what’s going on, guys?”

James wastes no time and leaps over the fallen couch, slipping into Steve’s room to distract him and slamming the door shut.

And then the noises come.

“Dear god,” Tony says, clapping his hands over his ears, and Clint giggles when Steve curses from behind the door.

“Stay strong for America, guys,” Sam tells them seriously, and Natasha just snorts.

“Well then,” Pepper says, when she hears Steve moan, and Tony motions for JARVIS to start playing something loud and upbeat and noise-drowning.

There’s another pause, and everyone starts rearranging party items again, taking their time and pausing to giggle and waggle eyebrows at each other whenever a suspicious sound pokes through the music. Pepper can’t keep the grin off her face, despite how she tries, and Tony winks at her when she glances in his direction.

James finally emerges twenty minutes later, hair messy and face flushed and Clint says “gross, dude,” and Steve trots out obediently behind him and stops short, taking in the sight with an adorably surprised expression. The couch that Thor knocked over is still on it’s side, decked in streamers and tinsel and confetti.

“Happy drunk-Steve party!” James announces in english. He’s hugging Buckybear.

“This party is held so James can see you get drunk,” Bruce tells him, and Steve is stunned for a moment before turning over to kiss James in the hair. James squirms and blushes and hides his face in his bear.

“Stop being cute,” Tony wrinkles his nose and digs out a forkful of some cake, “you should drink some alcohol and get wasted so we can record this moment for the archives. Because reasons.”

\--

And everyone is pleasantly buzzed when Steve stands up, red faced, and promptly announces that he is in love.

James does a dramatic spit-take.

“I love you,” Steve tells him very seriously, “you are the love of my life. I’ve been crushing on you back in the 1930s when I saw you walk past my block with a skinned knee and an ice cream cone, and I’m definitely crushing on you now, and I love your hugs and kisses and your face and your dick, and I’m marrying you one day.”

Bruce and Sam have tears in their eyes and Thor is clapping very enthusiastically, and James is flustered  with a happy blush on his cheeks when Steve stalks over to to grab more alcohol and walks smack into the pantry’s sliding glass door.

“We should do this again,” Clint hiccups, and Steve sits up, rubbing his head and a strange wonderment in his eyes..

“You have a force field in your house, Tony!” Steve calls out, then mutters to himself, saying something along the lines of “the future is so cool.” It startles a laugh out of James, who is still staring at Steve in awe and in love.

Pepper will wake up tomorrow with a massive hangover, the first Captain America uniform folded in a package marked Express Delivery from the Smithsonian and several PR matters on her hands because Tony had posted the video of James and Steve drunkenly making out on youtube with the Avengers and herself cheering them on. But for now, she throws her shot glass in the air and Natasha, beside her, lets out a long whoop.

\--

James does tell Pepper his favorite cake flavor. It's Spiced Dulce de Leche Banana Icebox Cake and it's one of the most ridiculous flavors she has ever heard of and she orders James several boxes of it.

Steve tells her much later, that it was James's first time eating cake and that whatever flavor he gave Pepper was the last flavor he tried and also the only flavor whose name he remembered, because of the sheer ridiculous-ness of it. Pepper then sends a different cake to their floor every week on a Saturday, and she finds a slice left for her every week on Sunday morning. Steve tells Pepper that it's part of James's Fuck-Hydra campaign, because obviously Hydra has never let James have any cake, and Pepper tells Steve that she is glad to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an excuse to write about drunk steve


	6. A Clint Barton type spy thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's see what Clint has to say.

**A Clint Barton type spy thing**

Out of anyone in the tower, Clint Barton is most likely to know what dirty little secret you are hiding.

Sure, if you think super-skilled and dirty-secret-uncovering assassin, your mind probably jumps to Natasha, the Black Widow. Natasha is a master in her field and everyone knows it.

And that, my friend, is precisely the problem.

See, someone with a skeleton in his closet would walk into the room with Natasha and instantly up their guard. Their guard would be so high, their guards would have guards. Sure, Natasha would know something is up the moment she glances in your direction, but if your guards’ guards have guards there is only so much she could do. 

Nobody walks into a room with little old Clint Barton snoozing in a corner in bandages and thinks, hey, I have to keep my mouth shut for a while because Clint Barton’s here. No, they go, oh, it’s little old bow-wielding Hawkeye, without Black Widow by his side. It’s just Hawkeye.

But they forget that Clint’s pretty good at the spysassin game, too. Clint Barton is a better shot than Natasha and maybe not as skilled as espionage, but pretty good at what he does, thank you very much. Who chased Nat down across 7 continents and 52 countries when trying to bring her in? That’s right. This guy.

The point is, Clint Barton knows a lot of secrets, maybe even more so than Natasha, because nobody seems to remember that about him.

So it’s pretty much a huge surprise when Tony Stark sits across him with a determined expression on his face, the same look he gets when he is about to announce plans for something involving all-nighters and shredded blueprints.

“Barton,” Tony says, slamming his hands on the table.

“Stark,” Clint greets.

There is a long silence.

“I need your help,” Tony finally says, “at… spy things.”

“Is Nat busy?” Clint asks.

“What? No?” Tony looks confused, “no, this is a Clint Barton type spy thing.”

“And what is a Clint Barton type spy thing,” Clint is intrigued.

“You know,” Tony waves his hands around, “chill in the room, blend in to make yourself look like part of the windowsill, and pretend to sleep while eavesdropping. That sort of thing.”

Wow. Tony noticed.

“You are a genius,” Clint says, impressed.

“I know,” Tony preens, then, “anyways. It’s about The Winter Soldier.”

“You want me to spy on The Winter Soldier,” Clint deadpans. 

The Winter Soldier is Natasha’s mentor, just slightly less skilled than her because she had more time to hone her abilities, a terrifying guy, and currently set out to court Steve Rogers. 

It’s a great idea. 

“Not spy, just… be there conveniently whenever he and Cap are schmoozing. I mean, yeah, they’re pretty much always attached at the hip, but, you know. We need evidence. Audio and photographic evidence. Sure, there’s JARVIS, but it’s more personal when you’re there. You get vibes. JARVIS can’t sense vibes. Okay, maybe he can, and if he can’t I should get him to work on it, but vibes. For research.”

Clint grins. ”Research.”

Who can argue with science?

\--

Clint is snoozing lightly on the windowsill when Steve comes in. The Winter Soldier is hot on his heels, as usual. The Winter Soldier narrows his eyes in Clint’s direction but ultimately dismisses him and plops himself down next to where Steve had staked his claim on the couch.

Hah. Sucker.

“Protection detail,” The Winter Soldier says.

Steve hums.

The TV hums, too.

Tony said something about vibes. This has a calm vibe. Almost domestic.

“What do you want for dinner?” Steve asks.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t say anything.

“What about Thai? Have you had Pad Thai? Can you take spice?” Steve continues saying.

Clint isn’t sure if The Winter Soldier replies non verbally. He can’t see from the windowsill.

“No? How about Italian? Chinese? Japanese? Have you tried sushi?”

The Winter Soldier must have done something, because Steve says, “sushi it is!” 

“JARVIS, can you,” Steve says, and then rattles off literally everything off the menu. Did he memorize the menu, or did JARVIS flash it on the TV?

Clint hears the TV channel settling on Dog Cops.

“This show is great, it’s Clint’s favorite,” Steve says.

It sure is. 

Too bad he’s spying right now, or he’ll join them at the couch. At a safe distance away from any of The Winter Soldier’s knives. He’s still on thin ice after throwing a fork at Steve.

The Winter Soldier makes a satisfied noise. 

Nothing much happens until dinner comes, and then Steve is rattling off the merits of each Japanese dish with The Winter Soldier as his captive audience.

“This,” Steve is saying, “is Sake. Rice wine. Neither of us can get drunk, but it tastes good.”

“That thing,” Steve says again, “is a California roll. Made in Los Angeles, but still Japanese.”

Wow. Steve knows his sushi trivia.

The WInter Soldier must have does something, again, because Steve yelps rather indignantly.

“That’s not how you eat Sashimi!” Steve scolds.

\--

“Absolutely disgustingly domestic,” Clint tells Sam the next time he’s over.

Sam looks faintly giddy. It might be the alcohol.

“Steve’s in love,” he croons.

"Steven has found a worthy shield mate," Thor nods in approval. He takes a large swig of whatever he has.

"Go Fish!" Natasha cheers.

"We're playing poker," Sam tells her.

"This are UNO cards," Clint says.

Thor doesn't say anything. He's building a card house.

\--

Clint is hanging off the side of the couch when Steve manhandles The Winter Soldier into the common room.

“Grounded, you’re absolutely grounded, I don’t know if I can ground you but you are, grounded!” Steve hisses.

Clint startles enough to fall off the side of the couch.

“What the fuck,” Steve says angrily.

Wow. Language, Captain America.

“What the fuck was that,” Steve throws something. It sounds like a pillow.

“Sharon was my mission partner! She’s a SHIELD agent! Peggy’s grand-niece! We were on a quick mission and I told you not to follow me, but you did, and I can let that slide because you’re always under the radar and SHIELD can’t do much about it, but now you shot my teammate! She could have been seriously hurt!”

“She pointed a gun at you!” The Winter Soldier shouted back. It was in Russian.

“Don’t give me any of that shit,” Steve sounds seriously pissed. “You blew our op, but Sharon in the ER, and you’re still talking back to me - seriously?”

Sharon is in the ER?

“You’re lucky I was there and the bullet only went through her arm! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Oh thank god, dear Sharon.

“You come into my life, won’t stop following me around, act all fucking - stupidly fucking, goddamn protective all the time! The first time you try to kill my friends - okay, whatever, fuck Hydra! This time? What do you have to say for yourself? I am Captain Fucking America - you think I can’t protect myself? You just gotta - gotta enter and ruin, ruin! Ruin my entire life, come in and - oh god, and what the fuck, huh? What the fuck?”

There’s a very loud door slam.

Clint risks a peek over the edge of the couch, sees The Winter Soldier glowering at the door.

And then.

Then.

And then The Winter Soldier lets out the most pained, hurt whimper that Clint has ever heard in his entire life - and Clint has spent a long time of his entire life on the streets among starving and abused dogs, he tells you - and sinks to the floor.

Shit.

Clint is so, not equipped to deal with this.

“Um,” Clint says from behind the couch,

The Winter Soldier has curled up into a small, shivering ball.

“I’m sure Steve doesn’t mean it,” Clint tries, “the part about ruining his life, I mean.”

The ball shivers.

“He shares his movie-night popcorn with you. Steve doesn’t share popcorn with anyone,” Clint offers.

The ball uncurls slightly. Clint considers it an achievement.

“He’s just angry. Sharon’s a good friend of his, you know?” Clint says, “give Steve a while to cool down. He’ll be fine.”

The Winter Soldier ball blinks blearily up at Clint. His eyes are red.

Poor guy. Getting chewed out by your superhero boyfriend must suck, huh.

Clint crawls over from behind the couch and sits next to The Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier sniffles.

“He does care about you, you know,” Clint says.

The Winter Soldier shrugs. He uncurled from his ball, now.

The Winter Soldier finally looks up and stares at Clint for an unnervingly long time. Clint is pretty sure that he could see through his soul. Was that an invasion of privacy? Is that where Nat got it from?

Satisfied with whatever he saw, The Winter Soldier finally turns away. Clint considers that another achievement.

“I,” The Winter Soldier starts. Pauses.

Clint waits.

“I like Steve,” The Winter Soldier admits softly, “I don’t want him to be mad at me.”

Clint nods.

“I,” The Winter Soldier looks noticeably distressed. He shakes his head, frowns, then, “I, like like Steve.”

“And he like likes you too,” Clint tells him.

Another pause. 

Vibes? Calm and sad.

Then, “Sharon isn’t even that pretty,” The Winter Soldier mutters, petulantly.

Clint doesn’t laugh. He considers that his greatest achievement of the day.

\--

Clint is hanging off the side of the couch, again, when Steve manhandles The Winter Soldier into the common room.

“Sorry, baby, sorry, I’m sorry honey,” Steve is saying, “Baby, baby look at me?”

Clint startles enough to fall off the side of the couch.

Steve peppers small kisses onto The Winter Soldier’s forehead.

“You absolute piece of shit,” The Winter Soldier barks in Russian. His voice cracks, like he’s crying. Clint can’t see because his face is in Steve’s shoulder.

“Sorry, darling, sweetie, sorry,” Steve murmurs again.

The Winter Soldier murmurs something back. 

Steve says something back, softer.

Clint is Hawkeye, not Hawkears. He’d have to ask JARVIS what he said.

Steve finally picks The Winter Soldier up, cradles him in his large arms and stalks out.

Huh. Wondered what happened.

\--

“You fucking idiot,” JARVIS relays, which is hilarious with his disinterested British tone.

Then, "Sorry, baby, sorry, kiss it better?" 

"Ew," Tony says, like he's any better with Pepper.

“I wonder what I expected, honestly,” Clint tells Tony, who hums as he replays the video of The Winter Soldier in Steve’s arms.

“Something sappy, or a death threat, maybe?” Tony suggests.

“Sir,” JARVIS says, “The Winter Soldier has incapacitated Captain Rogers. They’re in the gym on the 45th floor.”

“Death threat it is,” Tony mutters, but his eyes look murderous.  Clint’s already reaching for his bow.

\--

Clint is hanging off the side of the couch, with Dog Cops playing in the background, when James walks in.

“Hi Clint,” James says softly, in english.

Clint startles enough to fall off the side of the couch.

“You spoke in English,” Clint says, in awe.

James looks mildly offended.

“You all forget I’m American,” James huffs. 

Clint doesn’t say anything. There isn’t much he can reply to.

James settles on the couch. He looks… lonely, without Steve there.

“That’s my favorite show,” Clint offers.

James looks up. “Steve said,” he says.

“I know, I was there,” Clint tells him.

James looks surprised, briefly, then he nods just slightly. “You were, weren’t you,” James sounds incredulous.

“People tend to underestimate my presence,” Clint says, proudly.

The Winter Soldier underestimated him! Clint counts that as an achievement.

James stares at him for a long time. Clint thinks about the parking ticket he got a year ago, the wallets he picked as a kid, and the time he accidentally pushed Steve down the stairs when they were trying to attempt something they saw on Vine.

“I guess they do,” James finally says, turning back to the TV, with a voice that tells Clint he wouldn’t underestimate him again anytime soon.

\--

Out of anyone in the tower, Clint Barton is most likely to know what dirty little secret you are hiding.

Clint’s pretty good at the spysassin game. Clint Barton is a better shot than Natasha and maybe not as skilled as espionage, but pretty good at what he does, thank you very much. Who chased Nat down across 7 continents and 52 countries when trying to bring her in? That’s right. This guy.

The point is, Clint Barton knows a lot of secrets, maybe even more so than Natasha, because nobody seems to remember that about him.

But nobody, not even Clint Barton or anyone, for that matter, expected the moment when Steve dropped down on one knee and asked James to marry him.

In Russian.

It wasn’t even some haphazard messy broken Russian. It was incredibly fluid and fluent and spoken in the way a long-time speaker would, and from the way Steve was grinning, he knew it too. The only thing Russian and broken was Natasha and her mug as she stood there in shock.

Clint didn’t blame her. He didn’t move. Nobody moved.

Clint had his hand poised for a dart throw and across him, Sam had his hand buried in a bowl of peanuts. Tony was mid-gesture in his rant, Pepper still had her soup spoon up, Thor was mid-page flip on the paper, and Bruce’s mug was overflowing but he was still steadily pouring water.

James was the first to speak.

“What the fuck?”

Clint shared his sentiments.

“Is that a no?” Steve asked, again, in goddamn Russian. The grin has dropped off his face now. He looks slightly worried.

James blinks, once, twice.

And then he leaps heavily into Steve’s arms and topples them both.

“When did you learn Russian,” Natasha finally asks, when he and James have come up for air.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, lovely spy-assassin Russian friend,” Steve purrs, Russian-ified. 

“Yes,” James says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hohohoho


	7. The great russian speaking mystery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha's just pissed that Steve knows Russian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late posting but I had a lot of academic-related and procrastination-related commitments. Honestly I feel that I didn't do Nat's character justice with this chapter, so I might rewrite it sometime in the future. (Wanted to make Nat playful because that's what she is but not sure that's how it turned out.)
> 
> Also check out https://archiveofourown.org/works/4407638  
> Completely unrelated but a fun read that inspired the 2nd paragraph of this chapter. I don't think it's worth putting in the inspired by: section but check it out anyways.

**The Great Russian Speaking Mystery**

Natasha is a strong independent woman in her own right, incredibly skilled at espionage and downright terrifying with double pistols. She can read people amazingly accurately and can blend into any crowd and play any character as naturally as languages flow over her tongue. She holds her head high and considers petty grudges and silly arguments beneath her, and takes pride in knowing practically everything, or at least being able to pretend do.

But none of that explains why she is hunched over her laptop in her bed with terrible cyrillic scribbled in her notebook, or why James is sprawled on her carpeted floor with his tablet and his own notes in his own journal.

“Play that back, JARVIS,” Natasha demands, and Jarvis hums, before rewinding a video of James blabbing happily in Russian, again, with Steve looking suitably confused next to him. 

Nope, not this.

“Found anything yet?” Natasha says.

“I’m the fucking Winter Soldier,” James grumbles from the floor, “He learnt an entire goddamn language behind my back! My goddamn language!”

“You went literally everywhere with him!” Natasha says, “think! Where and when could he possibly have picked up Russian when you were clinging to him like a limpet?”

“If I knew,” James says, petulantly, “I wouldn’t be here right now.”

“You love spending time with me,” Natasha tells him, affronted.

“You’re my friend,” James says, matter-of-factly,”but Steve’s my fiance. We could be having great sex right now.”

There’s a smack. 

Natasha has hit her had on her laptop.

“He heard us talking about him having sex,” she lets out an embarrassed moan.

James pauses, thinks. Then, “oh no. Oh. No.”

“Oh no,” Natasha agrees.

“He’s never gonna let me hear the end of it,” James groans, again.

“You’ve described every inch of his dick to me!” Natasha all but shrieks, as the horror finally sets in, “in front of him!”

“Well it’s a goddamn perfect 9 inches-” James starts.

“SHUT UP!” Natasha screams.

There’s a smack. 

Natasha has thrown a pillow. It hits James hard on the head.

“KEEP WATCHING VIDEOS!” James yells.

“DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO, ASSHOLE,” Natasha yells back.

“STOP YELLING AT EACH OTHER,” Clint yells from the kitchen. 

James glares at Natasha. Natasha glares back. James doesn’t stop glaring, an impressive feat.

Then again, he taught Natasha to glare like that.

Clint pads into the bedroom, disgruntled, with a bowl of popcorn. He sits in front of his own laptop and squints at the both of them, before pulling out a surveillance tape of his own.

“I can’t believe he pulled one over us,” James mutters.

“I’m a trained assassin,” Natasha slams hard on her keyboard, as the next video plays. It’s a short surveillance clip of Steve on his laptop. The window open is a wikipedia article on the world’s largest ball of yarn.

“I fucking trained you,” James says, “If I couldn’t figure it out, how could you expect to?”

“I have more experience than you,” Natasha tells him. That’s true.

“Since when did Steve become a master of espionage?” Clint huffs. He watches a video of Steve using a dictionary. It’s a dictionary of scientific terms, in english.

“I’m so proud,” James says. His video shows himself cooing Russian into Steve’s hair. Steve doesn’t look like he understood a single word, but is enjoying it anyways.

“I’m angry at him,” Clint says.

“So am I,” James agrees, “proud, and absolutely pissed. I’m not going to let him touch me until we figure out when and how he learnt Russian,”

“As if,” Natasha scoffs, scowling at her screen.

“I’m The fucking Winter Soldier,” James snaps, with no real heat, “I can abstain from hot supersoldier gay sex if I want to.”

“I’ll take you up on that bet,” Clint says, “hundred bucks.”

“Deal,” says James, determined.

“You in, Nat?” Clint looks up. 

“Goddamit,” Natasha curses.

“Language,” says the Steve in her video.

\--

(This is how it starts: 

The Winter Soldier had a large sweater, Steve’s sweater to be specific, snuffed into his face, wide red eyes and messy hair and Steve slides into the blanket nest that he was making, and starts to play the youtube video of failed parkour attempts.

“That one’s me,” Steve points out, and Natasha can see from the corner of her eyes, the short 7-second clip of Captain America tumbling headfirst down the stairs with Clint egging him on.

The Winter Soldier’s expression doesn’t visibly change, much, but Natasha imagines he is slightly more amused than he was.

And then Steve runs a stupidly large hand into The Winter Soldier’s hair and said Soldier goes boneless and squishy against Steve’s side and Natasha sees Sam grinning so hard that his face might freeze like that forever - and maybe there’s something in her chest too, something she won’t admit.

But she knows, this is when The Winter Soldier falls in love.

However, this is not when Steve learnt Russian.)

\--

“Miss Black Widow,” Steve purrs a greeting, in Russian, as he saunters into the common room later that day with a shit-eating grin on his face.

Natasha glares.

It’s in fucking perfectly accented Russian. What the hell?

“How’s the research going, Clint?” Steve asks again, in fucking. Russian. 

Clint glares, back.

“Hey honey bunches,” Steve coos. It seems like he’s planning on speaking Russian to the three slighted assassins.

“Where did you learn Russian,” James snaps, in French.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, babe,” Steve returns in French, which Natasha would be more surprised to hear except that a lot of digging told her that one of the Howling Commandos was French, but none Russian. Unsurprisingly.

She ignores Steve. 

“I’m taking you on a date,” Steve finally says, shuffling on his feet, when James continues to steadily ignore him.

James doesn’t look up. He continues scrolling something on his tablet.

‘Right now,” Steve clarifies, then, “we’re going to get Japanese. In Japan.”

James does not look up, but he shifts ever so slightly.

Dammit, James. Don’t do it. Don’t say yes. What did you say three hours ago? You were going to ignore Steve, James. 

Honor the bet.

“Come on,” Steve whines, “I got the helicopter ready.”

Hook, line, and sinker.

James doesn’t look up, or move or do anything in that matter, except for pout and narrow his eyes even further at the screen and Steve beams and leans over to kiss him on the forehead and says, “see you at 7, dear,” before bouncing off happily.

And the elevator door shuts, and then James leaps up and throws his tablet down.

“Help me get ready,” he demands, and Clint throws his hands up.

“What happened to the silent treatment, man?” Clint demands.

“I’ve never been in a helicopter,” James says, rather excited, almost bouncing on his toes.

“Hydra put you on helicopters,” Natasha frowns.

“I don’t remember being on a helicopter,” James amends, then, “come on, help me.”

Clint throws down his laptop, too. Traitor.

They stare at Natasha expectantly. 

Dammit. 

Natasha's a sucker for blue eyes and blonds and puppy dog looks. Not necessarily on the same person. 

Don't tell Steve.

She sighs, and puts her laptop down. James beams.

“You owe me a hundred bucks, James,” Natasha reminds him.

“It’s just hundred bucks,” James waves his hands, “I’m going to have helicopter sex. Worth it.”

“But I want helicopter sex,” Clint whines, again, and James reaches over to cuff him on the ear.

\--

(This is how it starts: 

Steve Rogers is lounging on the couch, Natasha sprawled across his lap on her Starkpad and him with his own, when The Winter Soldier pads in.

The Winter Soldier glares at Natasha.

Natasha glares back.

The Winter Soldier glares harder.

Natasha stretches across Steve’s lap, blinks lazily, and goes back to staring at her Starkpad.

“Natasha,” Steve says, softly, and Natasha sighs and shifts so that she’s still pressed to Steve’s side, just not directly on top of him. Cold days are best spent cuddled up with super-soldier furnaces, and The Winter Soldier’s glares are not going to stop her.

The Winter Soldier shoots her an affronted look as he claims Steve’s other side, and starts staring sullenly at Steve from under a large arm which he managed to get tucked under, who sighs again.

“Hey Soldier,” Steve starts, “I,” and then there’s a weird hitch in his breath and his entire body tenses and Natasha looks up to see The Winter Soldier staring, puzzled, into Steve’s eyes and Steve staring back.

“Steve?” Natasha prompts, finally, after long seconds, and Steve blinks.

“I,” Steve says.

Then blushes.

“Silly Steve,” The Winter Soldier coos, wriggling deeper into Steve’s side, and this is when Natasha knows. This is how Steve Rogers falls in love.

However, this is not when Steve learnt Russian.)

\--

Dammit.

\--

“Remember when you were weird and possessive and spoke only in Russian to Steve?” Sam brings up one day, when Steve is out volunteering or picking fights or volunteering to pick fights, or whatever else that Steve does when he’s not being an ABSOLUTE DICK. The common room is filled with Avengers, and Pepper. in various stages of frustration, all engrossed in different stages of observation and analysis of Steve Rogers and the Great Russian Speaking Mystery.

“I remember,” James says, clicking aimlessly at whatever tab he’s got open on Steve’s laptop. 

“Do you think he could’ve picked up Russian like that?” Sam thinks.

James wordlessly hands him a sheet of paper.

“What?” Sam asks.

Natasha snatches it from him. It’s a note.

“James,” it reads, “down at the hospital today. Teaching kids how to do crafts. Have fun looking into surveillance tapes! Love, Steve.”  

What.

It’s written in cyrillic. 

What the fuck?

“What the fuck?” Clint echoes her sentiment, reading from behind her shoulder.

“When did Steve learn cyrillic?” Sam demands.

There’s a smack.

James has his head planted face-down on the keyboard. 

“I don’t know!” James wails.

Tony throws his hands up in defeat.

“Now,” Pepper says, frowning at her screen, “James, you said that with the super-soldier serum, it takes you at least a month to pick up a language, and at least 3 months after that to be completely fluent like the locals, right? When has James left Steve’s side in the past 4 months?”

“On some simple missions here and there,” James says, “nothing more than four days.”

“He and I went on that mission to Russia that one time,” Clint offers, “he couldn’t read the street signs and drove the wrong way so we had to take a huge detour. Like, we wasted 3 hours because the road went on forever and it was one-way.”

“When was that?” Tony asks.

“3 months ago,” Clint mutters sourly.

“This is going nowhere,” Sam groans.

And then Steve saunters in. Pauses, and blinks.

“Hey guys,” Steve says, a grin creeping up on his face.

“Don’t start, Rogers,” Sam warns.

Steve grins brilliantly at the room at large, and Natasha wants to go over and punch him.

“Steve,” James grins, and Natasha.

Natasha’s heart melts, okay, she doesn’t like admitting that she has feelings - unprofessional. Especially in her profession. But she does, and seeing James, coming back from a place where she never thought anyone could come back from, and falling in love, of all things!

It gives her hope.

Clint reaches over and squeezes her shoulder.

It’s okay.

\--

“I’m kinda scared,” Natasha finally admits to Clint, when she’s curled up on the bottom of his bed.

“Yeah?” Clint says.

“Steve - he’s good, but I’m better. I’m supposed to be better.” Natasha says.

“You don’t have to be the best at anything. Being beaten by Steve isn’t all that bad,” Clint starts, and Natasha sighs.

“I’ve trained my whole life for this, Clint, it’s all I know,” she tells him, softly, “Espionage is everything I’m good at. Steve’s not even trained for this. If he can outsmart me? Anyone can.”

“Now,” Clint chides gently, “you’re looking down on Steve, and looking down on yourself.”

Then, “it’s okay to feel scared.”

“Yeah,” Natasha says, then curls up and falls asleep.

\--

(This is how it starts: 

Long before SHIELD finds Captain America, long before Clint finds her.

Natasha has her head high and eyes cold and she doesn’t scream, even when The Winter Soldier reaches over and breaks her arm in two.

At first, she’s hurt, scared, and confused.

She doesn’t scream, but she wants to, when The Winter Soldier is strapped down on the chair and his body convulses and they make her watch the entire process.

Then, she’s hurt, and scared, but then she gets it.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t remember her.

But she’ll remember for him.

It’s okay.)

\--

“You know,” Natasha tells Steve, when her legs are thrown over his, “I’m not going to stop searching until I figure out how you learnt my entire goddamn language behind my back.”

Steve has the decency to look a little guilty.

“Sorry Nat,” he says, “but-”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Natasha waves the words away, “I’ll figure it out. It’s personal pride, Rogers, and I have money riding on this bet-”

“-I learnt Russian back in World War 2,” Steve blurts out.

What.

“What,” says Natasha.

“Well, one of my guys taught me some basic Russian, because Hydra was working alongside the Russians even back then, so I’d figured I’d pick it up. A bit of directions and commands and swear words, but not enough to understand you guys, at first, but it was enough to make some sense out of things. And hearing you and Clint and James speak Russian all the time was, well, helping my learning a little? Also, Sharon and Google Translate were pretty helpful.”

Natasha blinks.

“Nat?” Steve asks.

Natasha blinks, again.

There’s another pause, then, “I don’t know how to write cyrillic. I got Sharon to write that note for me.”

“What,” says Natasha, again.

“I thought it was funny?” Steve tries.

Natasha has never, ever, ever.

She has never ever felt so betrayed, and so relieved, in her entire life.

Steve didn’t learn an entire goddamn language behind their backs from scratch. He already knew it, and learnt more, but that was understandable. Acceptable.

And the cyrillic!

The goddamn cyrillic!

“Steve!” She cries, maybe in relief or in exasperation, then all but collapses on him.

“Nat?” Steve sounds panicked. 

Natasha feels large warm arms around her, and Steve’s abs are hard but she’s tired, and resolutely does not let go.

Natasha hears footsteps of the team as they enter the room.

“Did you break my spider,” Clint’s voice comes from the doorway.

“What’s going on,” Tony demands.

“Get your own fiance,” James whines, somewhere in the room, indignant.

\--

Natasha is pretending to be dozing with her head on Clint’s lap when Steve and James sit heavily on the couch beside her.

“So,” james says conversationally, “I accidently broke your phone.”  

“Shit,” Steve mutters softly, and Tony bolts awake in the recliner across him and points an accusing finger.

“Bad word! Pepper, bad word!”

“You’re such a child, Tony,” Pepper murmurs softly, from where she’s lounging on the couch.

“I dropped it down the stairs,” James says, unconcerned, “a hundred times.”

“Is this because I was texting Sharon,” Steve says accusingly.

“No,” James tells him, innocently.

Natasha almost snorts.

“I’m prettier than Sharon, right?” James mutters, in Russian.

“Course you are,” Steve mutters back, and Natasha almost opens her eyes in surprise, until she remembers that Steve is now openly a Russian speaker.

“Reminds me of the time Sharon had to bring you along on one of her undercover missions as her date,” Clint laughs softly, “James got so mad.”

“Wait,” Steve pauses. Natasha can hear him thinking. Then, “was that when you cut a hole in every single left sock that I owned? And wouldn’t speak to me for three days?”

“Yes,” James says, emphatically.

Natasha’s glad that things are back to normal.


	8. Agent Carter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of wondering how anyone finds this fic, ever. Do you just tag hop on ao3 or..?

**Agent** **Carter**

Sharon’s surprised when Steve asks her for help.

She uses the term “asks”, loosely, because Steve is a stubborn asshole and kind of dense sometimes, but at least smart enough to swipe her passcode and download a Russian to English dictionary app in her phone instead of his own.

“Protection detail,” Steve says in Russian into her speaker, except that he looks suitably confused like he has no idea what he’s saying, and he butchered the phrase so she can barely make it out.

“Steve,” Sharon says, and Steve looks up.

“The Winter Soldier likes speaking in Russian around me,” Steve says in way of explanation, “I learnt some Russian back in world war 2, but, it’s not enough to understand him when he goes full it’s-time-to-confuse-Steve mode, and-”

Sharon holds a hand up and Steve immediately quiets down.

“Protection detail,” Sharon enunciates clearly in Russian, slowly, then says in English, “that means protection detail.”

Steve looks confused, then, “he says that all the time. For everything he’s doing.”

“Everything?” Sharon asks.

“The first time he said that, he drank all my coffee,” Steve pouts, then, “wait, I didn’t know you spoke Russian.”

“You don’t know a lot about me,” Sharon says teasingly, “a lady’s got to retain some mystery.”

“If only I knew Russian,” Steve says.

Sharon waits.

Steve takes a long sip of his coffee and fidgets.

Sharon finally sighs, and prompts, “do you want me to help you with Russian?”

Steve brightens up. “Would you?” He says, looking like a puppy.

“Steve,” Sharon starts, then pauses, and then shakes her head fondly.

How is he 90 years old and still such a child?

\--

“So,” Sharon says, when they meet again next week in the same hole-in-the-wall coffeehouse, “where’s The Soldier today?”

She’s aware that he followed them the last time Steve came over, but was sure he’d lost surveillance when they rounded up to her apartment.

“He’s tailing us a couple of blocks down,” Steve tells her, “it’s going it be harder to learn Russian than I thought.”

“Wanna come up to my place again?” Sharon asks. She takes a sip of her caramel frappe.

“He was pissed that I left his sight the last time,” Steve admits, “gave me a dressing down on safety and leaving myself alone with crazy women and said the phrase protection detail a couple of times- I think so, at least, because it was all in Russian.”

“Mhm,” Sharon says, “so where do you want to go?”

“Coney island?” Steve suggests, “haven’t been in a while. It’s really noisy there.”

“Won’t your Soldier get jealous?” Sharon hums.

“What? Why?” Steve cocks his head. Sharon wants to reach over and knock him on his skull.

“Didn’t he hijack your shower and literally sit on your dick that one time?” She asks, and Steve blushes scarlet.

“That wasn’t, he didn’t really, I mean-” Steve tries, then falls silent.

“Uh huh,” Sharon nods, “come on. We’re going to Coney.”

They take the subway because Steve is actually a child and likes pressing his face to the window and gaping at skyscrapers. 

Sharon smirks at The Winter Soldier standing sullenly across the platform. Steve waves, and The Winter Soldier’s glare darkens and Sharon flips him off.

Steve points out a chalk drawing on the sidewalk and a group of children flying a kite and someone in a bright red suit sitting at the edge of a building, and tugs at her hand extra hard when he spots a group of dogs chasing a frisbee at a park. Sharon doesn’t have to turn around to know that The Soldier’s probably glaring extra hard at her.

They do reach Coney Island, in the end, and Steve drags Sharon down the boardwalk to watch the sunset, only to get distracted by the vendor selling cotton candy. Such a child.

“Teach me Russian,” Steve says, when they’re finally seated in the spinning teacup among a lot of screaming people.

“What do you know?” Sharon asks, and Steve starts to recite several swears and battle commands and miscellaneous vocabulary, with a decent amount of fluency. 

“Great,” Sharon tells him, when the teacup slows, “we’ll work on basic conversational phrases on the next ride.”

“Bananas,” Steve says in Russian.

\--

They meet once a fortnight, or whenever their schedules allow, and Sharon takes great pride in out-maneuvering the Soldier. Their last stop is always the Russian family restaurant a few blocks down the road from her apartment, who “didn’t know you were dating such a nice young man, sweetie,” and thought that it was “absolutely wonderful that your handsome boyfriend could speak Russian! Does he work with you? Looks like he could be in the CIA!”

They get a discount, or rather Steve gets a discount because he orders everything off the menu and scratches their fat tortoiseshell cat behind the ear, and Sharon is pretty sure that the daughter has a crush on Steve after he told her that he liked her tattoos. 

“So,” Sharon says, as Steve digs through his numerous shopping bags for his wallet, “what did you get all this stuff for?”

“The Soldier,” Steve says, “he likes stealing my clothes, and getting them dirty and ripped. Pretty sure he’s doing it on purpose.”

Sharon pauses, then says, “sharing clothes?”

Steve hums, oblivious, and Sharon can see why SHIELD does not send him on covert operations.

“Aha!” Steve pulls out his wallet, and starts to rearrange the clothes.

“I got this one for him,” Steve tells her, pulling out a sweater with the Captain America Shield printed on the front. “He hated the last one I got,” Steve says proudly, “got that sweater extra ruined just for me-”

“Uh-huh,” Sharon says, and takes a sip of her water.   
“This one,” Steve shows her a pair of socks with Natasha’s widow bites on it, “He loved the pair with little Hawkeye’s bows and arrows on it. I already got him one with tiny Hulks, and-”

Sharon takes a bite of whatever appetizer that they decided to serve first. It was egg.

“-got him this headband with fuzzy cat ears,” Steve was saying, “because one time Darcy came over with Jane and she had those on and The Soldier looked horrified at them, so I thought it’d be cute-”

Sharon nodded slowly, and stole some of Steve’s chicken from under his nose.

“-he liked the really large crocheted pair of gloves that Sam has,” Steve told her, “was eyeing them when Sam came in wearing those, so I thought-”

Sharon scans heads and sees The Soldier glowering at her from somewhere across the street, Steve still going on about his various shopping decisions across her, and winks.

\--

“The Winter Soldier?” Peggy asks.

“He was Hydra’s assassin,” Sharon tells her, “metal arm, wears a mask. A ghost, until Hydra sent him out in the open in a last-ditch attempt to save themselves.”

“I might remember that,” Peggy admits, pauses, then says later, “did he kill a President?”

“Maybe,” Sharon shrugs, “we don’t have records of his kills, which could be anywhere from dozens to hundreds, maybe even thousands. He was a weapon.”

“And you have him in SHIELD’s custody?” Peggy takes a sip of her tea.

“Sort of,” Sharon pauses, turns the situation over in her head, then lets out a bark of startled laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of it.

“The Winter Soldier,” Sharon says, spluttering in her coffee, “is currently trying to woo Steve Rogers.”

“Ooh,” Peggy sits up straight, intrigued.

“Oh yeah,” Sharon snorts, “like a jealous girlfriend. Wears Steve’s clothes, follows him everywhere, glares at me when I’m hanging out with Steve.”

“And what does Steve think?” Peggy asks, absolutely enraptured.

Sharon snorts so hard her throat hurts. “Steve is goddamn oblivious.”

\--

It’s inevitable, really, when Sharon goes down in a botched undercover mission.

Steve is furious.

“The Winter Soldier shot you,” Steve growls, and Sharon has never seen him looked so pissed in his life. She is, to be honest, a little terrified, because there is so much damage that a pissed off super soldier can do.  She might have had a little bit of sympathy for The Soldier, except that one of his bullets just went through her arm.

“Steve,” Sharon calls out, “Steve, wait,” but Steve has already stormed out of the medical bay and is no doubt about to give said Soldier the sternest talk of his life. 

Or worse.

Like a stern email reminder.

Maria drops by, looking worried. 

“Hey,” Maria says, “Steve said you were at the med bay.”

“Did Steve go broadcasting it to everyone?” Sharon asks.

“He did. Shouted at the top of his lungs. Pretty sure Stark heard it in his soundproof lab,” Maria jokes, cracking a smile, then, “how’s the arm?”

“Off active duty for a while,” Sharon says, then, “what did Steve do?”

“Punched someone with a metal arm,” Maria shrugs, “then yelled at him, swore a lot, then destroyed a treadmill.”

Sharon winced.

“We were undercover,” Sharon tells Maria, “well, I was, anyways. Spent a couple of months in a drug rig, then pointed my gun at Steve when he charged in with his Captain America outfit.” She laughs a little bitterly. “Got shot through my lower arm.”

Maria hums as she listens, then says, “put that in the report.”

“He wasn’t going to kill me. If he wanted me dead, I’d be dead,” says Sharon, “guess I have to thank him for that.”

“Not really, no,” Maria says, “he made a mistake. The Soldier wants to shadow Rogers to keep him safe, but interfering in too many missions would cause problems, especially in this case. He needs to know that.”

“Guess he’ll have to be careful next time,” Sharon says.

“Oh no, there’ll be no next time,” Maria reassures her, “Rogers was real harsh. The Soldier got the message - I heard from Pepper who heard from Clint said that The Soldier started to cry.”

“What?” Sharon is, for the lack of a better word, extremely shocked.

“Yeah,” Maria gets up  from the foot of her hospital bed and pats Sharon on the uninjured arm and says, “The Winter Soldier bursting into tears after Captain America yells at him. Wonder what Hydra would think,” then leaves.

Scratch her earlier statement. Sharon feels bad.

\--

Steve comes back much later, when her arm has been stitched and bandaged and she’s ready to go home. He looks terrible.

“You might have overreacted a bit,” Sharon says gently.

“Sharon,” Steve starts, but she cuts him off.

“He shot through my arm, yeah, but just my arm, you know?” She pauses, then, “you made him cry.”

“I did?” Steve says. He sounds as shocked as Sharon felt.

“Mhm,” she says, “Heard it from Maria who heard it Pepper, who heard it from Clint.”

Steve is silent for a long moment.

Then he says, “I’ll drive you home.”

Sharon quizzes him on his vocabulary on the drive, and Steve orders takeout from the Russian place.

\--

The next time Sharon is in Stark Tower, three days after being admitted and released from the medical bay, the Winter Soldier drops from the ceiling and lands softly in front of her.

It’s only years of conditioning and training that Sharon does not shriek. She does, however, pull out a gun with her uninjured arm.

The Winter Soldier surveys her bandaged arm, then gingerly holds up something in his flesh arm.

It’s a carnation.

“Is… this for me?” Sharon asks.

The Soldier stares at her, then at the flower, and pouts.

It’s frankly adorable. 

The Soldier doesn’t try to lob her head off or shoot her arm when she reaches and takes the flower, so Sharon counts that an achievement. What he does do is to give her a strange look then literally sprint away.

The carnation looks sad and limp in her hand. Sharon decides to press it and use it as a bookmark.

\--

“-And,” Sharon says, so Peggy’s eyes widen.

“He just ran off! No words, no explanation, nothing! Am I terrifying, Aunt Peggy?”

“Of course not,” Peggy coos, ruffling Sharon’s blond hair, “But between them, I’d expect that Steve be the one who runs away from pretty girls.”

“Steve doesn’t know how to run away from anything,” Sharon snorts unflatteringly.

“Well,” Peggy just grins at her, eyes glinting, “let me tell you about Private Lorraine.”

\--

Sharon meets Steve again, a week after that, back at the Russian diner.

“He doesn’t follow me out anymore,” Steve says, sounding a little put out.

“You’re the one who yelled at him,” Sharon points out.

“I feel kinda bad,” Steve admits sadly, his face falling, “didn’t even follow me around the Tower for two days.”

“He gave me a carnation,” Sharon tells him, after a long pause, because Steve sadly stirring coffee is not the Steve she wants to hang out with.

“What.” Steve says.

“I’m using it as a bookmark,” Sharon says. 

Steve squints at her and then flags their waitress down and orders everything on the menu, again. He starts a conversation with her in Russian and only slips up twice, which Sharon also counts as an achievement.

“So,” Sharon finally says, between bites of the Russian version of pasta, “hows things between you two?”

“Well,” Steve says, “it’s… alright.” 

“No sudden declarations? Confessions? Realizations?” Sharon watches Steve closely.

“Sharon, what are you talking about?” Steve looks at her, puzzled.

Sharon resists the urge to slap Captain America across the face.

\--

“I don’t understand,” Sharon waves a half-eaten croissant around, “how can someone be so absolutely clueless?”

“Well,” Natasha says, her legs propped up on Steve’s dining table, “I haven’t got the slightest fucking clue.”

Steve emerges from his room, brushing down the collar of his suit, which made him look extremely hot. Sharon might try to tap that but she’s pretty sure the Soldier would probably murder her in her sleep.

Speaking of.

“Where’s the Soldier?”

“Saw him sulking at the shooting range with Clint,” Natasha says, then looks Steve up and down and licks her lips.

“You look great, Steve,” Sharon reassures.

“What she said,” Natasha nods approvingly, “you’re almost late.”

“Why don’t you two have to go,” Steve whines, dragging his feet.

“Because,” Sharon reaches over to take the bottle of vodka from Natasha, “you’re going to a VA event endorsed and sponsored by both Captain America and Stark Industries.”

“And,” Natasha adds mischievously, “if you bring a date who doesn’t have a metal arm, he or she might be murdered in their sleep.”

Steve squints at both of them, and the door is promptly kicked in by one Tony Stark, who drags Steve out by the suit sleeve.

“Why does Steve even have a liquor cabinet?” Sharon turns to Natasha, “he can’t get drunk, right?”

“Dunno,” Natasha shrugs, “it’s great quality, though.”

They sit in silence for a while, soft but not awkward, passing a bottle between them.

Then, Sharon proposes, “wanna kick the boys’ asses at the range?”

“God yes,” Natasha says.

\--

“They finally got together,” Sharon announces, and Peggy beams and applauds.

“It took Thor’s help to finally get Steve’s head out of his ass and see how infatuated he actually was with the Soldier,” Sharon proclaims, “Steve came to the diner smiling like a dork. It was disgusting.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a nice young man one day,” Peggy says, “or woman, or neither, or both. I don’t judge. Maybe a cat?”

“Thanks Aunt Pegs,” Sharon says, “my apartment doesn’t allow pets.”

“Move out,” Peggy snaps.

\--

“His name is James,” Steve introduces, grinning like a proud parent. 

James narrows his eyes at her.

“Hey, James,” Sharon says, and takes the seat next to Bruce, who wordlessly hands her a freshly brewed cup of tea.

James takes the seat next to Steve and squeezes under his arm, staring suspiciously at Sharon. She drinks her tea and stares back blankly - years of interrogation training did not go to waste.

Natasha and Clint saunter in and take the loveseat, Natasha curling on top of Clint, who flashes Sharon a toothy grin.

Then, James says, in Russian, “Did I tell you about Steve’s dick?”

Sharon splutters her tea. Bruce doesn’t look up from his book, just reaches over and pats her on the back. Natasha and Clint, to their credit, aren’t phased.

“Not yet,” Natasha replies conversationally, “what about it?”

“I finally saw it,” James says smugly, sprawled over Steve’s stomach, “it was better than I expected.”

“Didn’t you see it that time you hopped into the shower?” Clint asks.

“That wasn’t the full view,” James says, “wasn’t even that hard back then. And this time I got a hands-on experience.”

Sharon chokes on more tea, again..

Steve furrows his brow and says, “are you guys talking about me?”

“Nah,” Natasha says, and Clint smothers a giggle and James just pats Steve’s leg and Steve just nods and looks appeased and goes back to his tablet.

Sharon reevaluates her stand about sending Steve into covert missions.

“It was a gorgeous dick,” James continues.

“Who tops?” Natasha asks, flipping through something on her phone.

“We switch,” James says happily, and when Sharon glances over he stares back smugly and Sharon thinks, ahh.

“Well,” Sharon says, standing up, “I’m oddly uncomfortable by this sudden change in conversation topic, so I’m going to look for Sam and we’re going to hang out.”

“Why?” Steve suddenly looks up again, worried, “they were talking about me, weren’t they? What did they say?”

Sharon wonders if any of her undercover missions could make space for a large blond with an impressive shoulder to waist ratio.

Sharon glances from Steve, to James, to Natasha and Clint, then says, “Nah.”

Steve narrows his eyes at her.

\--

“I’m so glad they got together officially,” Sam says over a beer and the noisy chattering of bar patrons.

“Really? Because I was in the common room earlier today and James started speaking, in Russian, about Steve’s dick,” Sharon deadpans.

“Times like that are when I regret getting these translators,” Sam says, then, “the pining was worse, though.”

“Oh definitely,” Sharon rolls her eyes, “speaking of, I need to update Aunt Pegs.”

“Oh, you’re keeping her in the loop, too? Can I come?” Sam looks excited, and mildly drunk.

“Sure,” Sharon says, then downs a shot.

\--

“Sharon,” Steve says one day, when he has his feet propped up on the dashboard with a drawing tablet in his hands.

“Yes, Steve?” Sharon says.

“I can’t write or read cyrillic,” he deadpans.

“And when did you figure that out?” Sharon asks smoothly.

“I got me and Clint lost in Russia trying to follow street signs,” Steve says, staring sourly down at his drawing tablet.

Sharon waits.

Steve makes some strokes on his tablet and fidgets.

Sharon finally sighs, and prompts, “do you want me to help you with Cyrillic?”

Steve brightens up. “Would you?” He says, looking like a puppy.

Sharon sighs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can i just say that I feel like Sharon is one of the most underappreciated people ever? She is a genuinely interesting character with depth and emotions and badassery, and she's a formidable agent and spy and she's a great person?? But her only role in the MCU is Steve's love interest, and the problem is that nobody likes the fact that she's Steve's love interest (I mean seriously, so what if it was canon in the comics? There was not enough development or continuity for anything to happen onscreen and anyways, Steggy?? Hello?) so nobody likes her, but I appreciate her. Everybody should. She's a great character that is abused by forced onscreen heterosexual romance to "appeal to the female audience". We want Sharon Carter kicking ass with Nat, not awkwardly kissing her dead aunt's boyfriend. Thus ends rant.
> 
> And thanks to all my commentors! Yall are great. Sorry for procrastinating this and all my other wip stories.


	9. Asshole cats and supersoldiers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tried to channel the essence of all there is Tony. Tell me if I failed?

**Asshole cats and supersoldiers**

Tony Stark hated Captain America on first sight, just on principle.

Dear old dad had set Captain America up on this pedestal of unattainable perfection of patriotism, heroism, and bravery, and not like Captain America was Howard’s own son, was he? Dear old dad kept talking about Captain America like he was made by Howard’s own hands to fit his image of perfection in a lab experiment. What about Tony? He was made from his dick. Sheesh.

And there came the great waking-up of the century, even greater than the awakening of JARVIS in which involved a lot of alcohol, a party, a media scandal and disgruntled Pepper. And then the unfortunate meeting of said Captain who wasn’t even a Captain in the army, and he was as high-strung and as pompous as Tony had imagined - ok, he didn’t have much to say given himself being himself and the circumstances were rather unfavorable so some of Captain America’s snappiness may have been because of the alien invasion but seriously, was that an excuse to wear his Fuck-You face everywhere? It’s not like Tony does it, no matter what Pepper says. Maybe Pepper was talking about a different type of fuck.

Anyways, Tony Stark hated Captain America on first sight. And it wasn’t just because of the lack of love in his childhood.

Until, that is, Captain America turned up by Aunt Peggy’s bedside and cried into her arms about smashing his Stark tablet and how everything was too loud and scary and unrealistic and how he misses his momma and all his other dead friends and also the live ones who were old and almost dead, and how nobody seems to see past the fact that he was Captain America and that everyone had unrealistic expectations of him and reporters were hounding him everywhere trying to dig into his head and made him replay the worst moment in his like aka the day he very genuinely literally died which was an actual 3 weeks ago for him and not 70 years and how he was tired and-

-Yeah. Ok. Tony can sympathize.

Tony can sympathize but seriously, sheesh, how grandly does someone like himself have to announce his presence before Aunt Pegs chews him out for eavesdropping? And, and Captain Am- wait, wait no, Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers’s America-Is-Disappointed-In-You, Son, You-Have-Let-Down-Your-Country-And-You-Disappoint-Me face was so much more effective than Aunt Pegs glare, and that wasn’t effective in the least, oh no, and-

-Yeah. Ok. Tony gets it.

Tony gets it so much that he gives Steve Rogers a house, or rather an apartment, more specifically a floor, in the newly renovated Avengers Tower because someone has to show dear old Steve Rogers the 21st Century’s American Hospitality, yes? So Tony gives Steve Rogers a floor on his amazing tower, and takes him on a grand tour and laughs when he startles at JARVIS until Pepper slaps him upside the head, and he shows Steve Rogers all their tower facilities and shoves food into his hands and says, “when can you move in?”

And Steve Rogers looks at him, and then Tony really looks back, and then he sees that Steve Rogers just looks… very, very sad, and so when Steve Rogers softly says, “no offence Tony, but… the Tower’s a bit much. I’d just like to have a quiet apartment somewhere in… Brooklyn, if you don’t mind.”

And, yeah. Ok.

“Yeah, Ok,” says Tony, trying not to be disappointed at all and he calls Pepper who says “great job, Tony,” and starts to browse through real estate listings on her Stark Tablet and buys out a small apartment somewhere in Brooklyn and asks for Steve Rogers’s taste in furniture and Tony sits Steve Rogers down and starts going on and on about technology and the superior Starkphone because that’s just how he is, and Steve Rogers smiles softly and for a moment looks so young again, and Tony doesn’t dwell on it.

Steve Rogers becomes just Steve, however, when he trips over Dum-E’s claw and tries to catch his balance on a worktable but ends up somersaulting over an office chair and face-planting himself on Tony’s very expensive and very glass window.

Tony can’t come up with an explanation for that, or a word, or anything, so he showers Steve with more electronics and a pair of indestructible headphones and offers to show Steve porn links until Steve looks appropriately scandalized, but then Bruce sits him down and slowly explains, over a cup of tea, that Captain America is no longer put on a higher stage of a human embodiment of all that is good and perfect, and how he has been humanized in Tony’s eyes into an actual living breathing person with insecurities and problems and one who makes mistakes and Tony can relate, so is trying to show his affection like an asshole cat who breaks glasses and brings home dead animals.  
Tony likes Bruce, even if Bruce makes Tony go all weird with things like emotions.

So Tony offers to be a cat, or rather he crashes Steve’s Brooklyn apartment with a toolbox and JARVIS and starts to bring in, in Bruce’s words, dead animals, or rather the modern miracle of technology and artificial intelligence. And he sees Steve sitting in the middle of a small circle of wrecked furniture  and blood stains that are probably his, trembling with his head in his hands and does Tony hear soft sobs?

So Tony sets down his toolbox softly and nudges aside the Captain America Shield with his foot and pulls out his phone and says, “hey JARVIS? Play Bruce’s un-hulk-ify playlist? You know the one?” And later when Steve’s on his feet again and righting the fallen ikea shelf on the cupboard, he turns to Tony and says, “did you just compare my panic attack to hulk transformation?”

Tony says yes, so Steve says thanks, and only Bruce and Pepper are allowed to make Tony feel weird with emotions and Steve is not included on that list, so Tony grabs a table lamp and smashes it against a wall.

“What the fuck, Stark,” Steve says.

“That rhymes,” Tony tells him.

\--

Steve does eventually moves into the tower, after the second panic attack that almost gives the old lady next door and her granddaughter a heart attack after Steve crashes through their very thin walls. Pepper tells Tony not to overwhelm Steve but he does it anyway, breaking into Steve’s floor which is actually his floor because this is his tower, and Clint comes in with a bandage and an oddly splayed leg and the three of them sit down and marathon dog cops, Steve squished in the middle of both him and Clint until Pepper comes in to yell at Tony and instead stares fondly and drags Tony off and wishes Steve and Clint a good night.

Then Pepper ties him to the bed and says, “looks like you and Steve are getting along,” and Tony grimaces and says, “can we not think about Steve right now?” and other than that, it is indeed a very good night.

\--

Tony would say that he and Steve have an unconventional friendship, with Steve being an old man who was all buddy-buddy with Howard and with Tony also being Steve’s landlord and 21st century technology dealer and whatnot, but they make it work enough, with Steve trying to avoid Tony until Tony breaks in with the next dead animal or electronic toy or both, on one occasion, and during communal periods where even Pepper shows up, and everything is fine, really, until Steve goes back to his Brooklyn apartment and stays there, PTSD or not, because “Tony, you’re giving me a headache,” and Tony is shocked and offended until Bruce softly points out that it’s nearing the anniversary of Steve’s actual literal death and all Tony’s been talking about are the fancy new helicarriers that SHIELD has and-

-Yeah. Ok. Tony feels bad.

\--

And then Nick Fury dies, and then Steve goes on the run, and then The Winter Soldier shows up, which is all some huge headache and mess that Tony really can’t wrap his head around, and he gives up trying to understand anything without wires when Nick Fury un-dies and Steve Rogers un-runs and The Winter Soldier tries to get into Steve’s pants.

That whole ordeal is pretty funny.

\--

Tony couldn’t comment or make references to Steve and planes and falling in world war 2 at all, literally, because Pepper made him sign an actual contract after he insulted Steve’s ability to pilot an exploding period nuclear aircraft and almost made him cry, but Pepper didn’t say anything about Steves and planes and falling in the 21st century, so Tony makes it his personal goal to exploit Pepper’s lack of foresight.

“The last time I fell out of the sky,” Tony says, “i didn’t get a boyfriend out of it. That totally takes away meet-cute points for us, Pepper.”

Pepper ignores him.

“He’s not my boyfriend, Tony,” Steve says, as if The Winter Soldier wasn’t plastered by Steve’s side 24/7/365 and was currently getting acquainted with every corner of the communal living room.

“You say that like The Winter Soldier isn’t plastered by your side 24/7/365 and isn’t getting acquainted with every corner of every room you’ve ever been in,” Clint says mildly, and Steve’s blush blossoms and darkens and trails a shy line down his collar and damn, if Tony wasn’t promised to another, Steve would certainly be on the top of his list, because wow did he age gracefully.

Yeah, okay. That’s real weird, Tony.

“Filial imprinting,” Bruce says abruptly, and the room at large turns to him, even Pepper who looks up from whatever paperwork she has in her hands.

“When ducklings or chicks hatch,” Bruce continues, “they form a really strong emotional attachment with the first larger animal they see, and regard themselves as one of them, following them around and learning from what they regard as their parent, acquiring behavioural characteristics and whatnot,”

Now that’s a thought. The Winter Soldier following Steve around. Imprinting. Is Steve the daddy? Heh, Daddy. What is the Winter Soldier trying to do? Follow Steve around for what? Certainly not to kill him, there were so many opportunities for. The Winter Soldier is just standing at attention like… a soldier! Wow, Tony! Wait, so what? Is Steve his captain? Is he trying to take orders?

“What Brucey-Bear means to say is,” Tony interrupts, “is that Robocop here thinks you’re his handler.”

Steve makes a face at that.

\--

“You know,” Tony says, “we have to set some boundaries. Barriers. Stop signs.”

“You’re the one to talk about boundaries, Tony,” Steve says, waving a spatula in Tony’s general direction.

Across Tony, the Soldier squints angrily - The Soldier does a lot of squinting, in general, like squinting at Steve and his darling Pepper and JARVIS’s security cameras and Natasha aka The Black Widow, but this is possibly his most hostile and tired of squints, directed at one softly humming Steve.

“You used to have something against this Tower,” Tony muses, “now you’re wandering around cooking eggs at 3am. JARVIS? Order more eggs, would you? Our dear Captain seems to be taking to them really well. Order all kinds of eggs. What does our dear assassin here think of quail eggs?”

And oh, yes, it turns out that The-Winter-Soldier-Is-About-To-Hydra-The-Fuck-Out-Of-Dealing-With-Steve’s-Shit-So-Don’t-Give-Me-Yours-Too look is much more terrifying than Natasha’s Black-Widow-About-To-Send-Your-Back-Through-That-Window look that Tony had almost (read: probably never going to ever, ever) master dealing with ever, which makes some sense considering their similar environments in which they were trained and who trained who, so Tony slinks down his his seat and holds his hands up placatingly and tries to keep still because wasn’t there something about predators and movements? Where’s Bruce’s extensive knowledge of predators and killing instincts when he needed him? Banner probably knew all about uncontrollable urges and sudden bursts of a need to snap Tony’s neck-

-Yeah, Ok. Tony shouldn’t be saying that. He loves Bruce.

Steve snorts unflatteringly and drags a large hand roughly through the Soldier’s messy hair and it’s a split second movement but the Soldier abruptly whips his head around and twists acrobatically and snaps his very very sharp teeth, narrowly missing the tip of Steve’s finger. Tony’s not ashamed to admit that he squeaked and may have peed his pants, just a little, not enough to catch the attention of - yeah, no, The Soldier’s wrinkling his nose weirdly in Tony's direction right now so it’s probably enough to catch the attention of one bootlegged pirated supersoldier and probably the original, and isn’t Tony glad he’s pretty much immune to embarrassment, thanks to his teenage years and early 20s.

Steve, that suicidal masochistic asshole, just laughs as if he hadn’t almost just lost a finger, and shoves the palm of his hand against the side of the Soldier’s face like how someone would push one of those toys - the pushable toys that can push themselves back up, what are they called? You push them down and they bounce back up, those annoying ones. If a super villain decides to model his armor out of one of those it would be truly annoying. What is it called?

“Roly Poly toy,” Tony says abruptly, and Steve shoots him a very strange look and the Soldier very roughly rubs the side of his face against Steve’s hand and growls warningly, and he somehow looks both affectionate and murderous and wow, Tony is not awake enough to deal with this, and he thinks the cat analogy is better applied to the Soldier than to him. But this is his kitchen so he stays and stares blankly and sleepily until Steve washes everything - by hand, that heathen, Tony needs to go over the marvels of 21st century basic technology again with him, sets everything back and then heads back down maybe 70 flights of stairs, the Soldier following him like he’s a puppy being tugged on by a leash and WOW that puts quite a mental image in Tony’s brain, so he vows to stop thinking and he goes back to his bed where Pepper manages to slap him even in her sleep for shifting the sheets.

\--

“You know,” Natasha nonchalantly points out one day, when she has a leg thrown over Steve’s lap and a middle finger up at a glaring Winter Soldier, “Steve’s not in danger with anyone here. You don’t have to follow him around.”

The Winter Soldier glares, and stares pointedly at Natasha’s toes, which are wriggling. The Soldier looks like he’s contemplating if it was worth 200 pounds of Steve Rogers getting mad at him if he sliced off the Natasha’s toes, and a fight against Black Widow herself, toes or no, would be one hell of a fight anyways and in retrospect, Tony should have thought of that first because he had zero doubt that Natasha would shoot a bullet through the centre of the Soldier’s eyes without a single second of hesitation if she wanted to.

Natasha flicks her wrist, disinterested, and burrows more snugly into Steve’s side. Tony could hear the tension. He could feel it. Ok, no, that was Pepper digging an elbow into his side, to urge him not to say anything stupid.

Tony decides to ignore her.

Tony opens his mouth, still not quite sure what to say but he thinks it would come to him the moment he says a single word, that’s how most of everything he says comes out, after all, and then Pepper jabs him harder and he lets out a soft oof and the Winter Soldier’s eyes flick towards them, looking irritated at either Tony or Natasha or maybe both.

Tony hopes it’s not both. Specifically just Natasha.

The Soldier says something in Russian, and Natasha snorts inelegantly and the Soldier just looks even more ruffled at that, and Steve reaches over absentmindedly to pat his hair and wow, that looks incredibly domestic, does Pepper see what’s going on - ok, no, she’s reading a document, ugh, Tony hates documents, no wonder he gives them to Pepper - wait, yes, the thing that is going on, the on-goings of the thing, the thing.

Steve laughs softly as the Soldier ducks away from Steve’s hand and huffs and Tony resolves to find out more about the thing.

\--

The thing, namely, is the Steve Rogers and The Winter Soldier thing and wow, Tony’s not judging at all, he can see where the Soldier’s coming from, really, because Steve Rogers? Wow. That is some genetically engineered perfect supersoldier ass right there in Tony’s tower, if you overlook his uptight and old man personality that makes Tony want to slap him on the head, but the Soldier is as old as Steve is so maybe it works in favour, and never let it be said that Howard doesn’t do good work because he made a grand total of maybe three great things in his life and one of them was that pun back in 1987 and the other was Tony Stark himself, of course, who else?

And maybe, maybe Tony can see where Steve is coming from too, because under that murderous look and long dark hair the Soldier is quite a handsome man, with defined features and a sharp jaw line and because Tony has a healthy respect for his life, he vows to never tell anyone that.

Tony decides to call Clint, or rather he breaks Clint’s coffee machine so Clint goes to him and then he sits Clint down and starts to describe the thing and watch Clint’s growing excitement.

“So when do I start,” Clint says.

\--

“The verdict,” Clint proclaims abruptly, over a piece of fried chicken and orange juice, “is yes.”

Tony doesn’t even need to think about what question (if there was a question in the first place) that Clint might be saying yes to, not with The WInter Soldier feeding Steve lasagna from a large pot in the seat across him, one seat, singular, and Steve humming sweetly into the Soldier’s hair that it is giving Tony cavities, and Clint fake-gags into his bowl of whatever he cooked up, and Tony snorts into his soup.

Natasha looks up sharply from her bowl of cereal, eyes snapping from Tony to Clint then to Steve and the Soldier, then to Thor, who is sitting next to her and inhaling his granola bars with oblivious happiness. In all honesty, Natasha is absolutely terrifying.

Thor says, taking a pause from eating so many granola bars that Tony is so glad he’s rich enough to supplement superhero and god diets, and anyways Thor says, “A warrior grows only ever valiant with his beloved by his side, with the two holding up their shield as one,” and Tony wonders if they teach gods to talk in fanciful poetic old-english ways in Asgard, and he wonders if Thor would give a speech at his wedding, is Tony married? No? Well he needs to rectify that - why isn’t he married? Isn’t he basically married to Pepper? There must have been a problem, he’ll have to ask JARVIS.

\--

James purrs into Steve’s hair and glares at Tony and Clint and Natasha and Sam and pretty much everyone else, and continues to mush his face into Steve’s dirty and sweaty blond hair and it’s disgusting and adorable and disgustingly adorable and adorably disgusting.

“This is okay,” Steve says, blushing.

“This is not okay,” Tony says, because two old men slowly reaching third base on his couch is not something that Tony wants to witness, at all, at any time.

James growls at Tony, and continues to press his nose into Steve’s neck and wrap his arms around Steve’s very large and very broad chest and Steve is blushing very hard right now, why is he okay with this, where was the 30s gentlemanliness and traditionalism that Tony keeps hearing about?

“A healthy display of affection is nothing to be ashamed of,” Thor says jovially.

“I’d say,” Natasha does say, eyeing the two ripped dudes practically getting it on on Tony’s couch, abandoning all subtlety and poise and ogling shamelessly, as does Clint next to her, and even dear sweet Pepper, and Tony would love to be jealous but the fact remains that he’s doing some staring of his own, over the edge of his Stark tablet, at one single-minded Winter Soldier necking a very flustered Steve Rogers.

“You know,” Tony muses, “I never did formally congratulate you on your coming out, Captain,” and Pepper kicks him in the shin but Tony bats her away and says, “so congratulations. Formally.”

“Thanks Tony,” Steve says, voice strangled and cracking and James lets out this strange whine-growl combination which makes Steve undergo a full body shudder and Tony is about to leave, okay he wasn’t, but then Steve stands up in a very swift motion and scoops up a very disgruntled and surprised James Barnes who looks rather annoyed at being interrupted in reaching third base with Steve’s collar.

“Bye,” Steve says, and James squints at the room in general, and then Steve literally sprints into the elevator.

“So that just happened,” Sam says.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for procrastinating this and literally everything else


	10. Vintage Queerbait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, Thor!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG SCHOOL AND LIFE AND WRITERS BLOCK I DONT THINK IVE UPDATED FOR LIKE MONTHS IM SORRY

Thor arrives promptly at Midgard to witness the hilarious aftermath of the spectacle of what Clint, son of Barton, calls the “Vintage Queerbait” situation. Tony chokes on his caffeine when Thor asks for clarification on the definitions, and Lady Pepper pats his arm. 

“It’s not really queerbait,” Pepper muses, one manicured hand thumping Tony solidly on the back, “we shouldn’t judge, anyhow.”

“Rogers is totally stringing the Winter Soldier on, has our poor little assassin wrapped around his pinky,” Clint argues.

“Rogers? Sweet sweet Steven Rogers?” Stark says, “I’d say our dorito superhero is still oblivious about the whole pig-tail tugging. It’s the Soldier wants in on some patriotic spandex action.”

“That’s crass, Tony,” Pepper chides. Clint snickers.

“Pig-tail tugging?” Thor muses.

“If a little boy likes a little girl,” Stark starts slowly, trying to wrestle the bunched-up magazine from Pepper’s hand, “he tries to get her attention and makes fun of her by, you know, tugging on her pig-tails. Her hair. Braids? Like, for young children. In pre-school, elementary school, whatever. Do you have that in Asgard? Schools?”

Thor thinks for a while. Then asks, “does it work?”

“No,” Pepper says emphatically, the same time Tony frees the papers from Pepper’s fingers, in which she retaliates by sinking her nails in his bicep. Tony yelps.

“Yes,” Tony offers. Pepper whacks him atop of the head with the liberated magazine.

“So the Soldier and the Captain,” Thor says, to a gleeful Tony and a grinning Hawkeye, “they are lovers?”

“Absolutely,” Tony and Clint say in unison. 

Pepper screeches, but just a little.

Clint snickers again. Thor nods thoughtfully.

-

Much later, when Thor sees Captain America sitting cross-legged in the common room with a very strange man draped over his lap, he connects the dots and says, “Greetings, Soldier of Winter. I am Thor, of Asgard!”

Thor has learned that such overly formal greetings are not considered the norm of the people of midgard, but he has decided to announce himself formally in the presence of someone who, as Lady Natasha told him, could match the prowess of the Captain and maybe even herself.

“Hi Thor,” Steven greets, blond hair peeking out from behind a mass of protective Winter Soldier. 

The Winter Soldier growls at him. It seems to him like a rather possessive yet admirable display of protectiveness over the Captain, who Thor knows no doubt can defend himself.  

He nods as a show of comradery and sits across the couple, who are in a position that Jane told him was discouraged in public among strangers, but Thor feels rather flattered that he is considered a close member of the team such that the Captain does not feel uncomfortable showing affection to his lover in his presence.

“I have heard that you have chosen the Captain to be your Shield Mate! A fine choice. May the nights be long and pleasurable!” Thor congratulates.

Next to him, Steve’s comrade, Sam Wilson, starts to laugh. 

“It’s not like that,” Steven says, and his lover stills on his lap, and shoots the former an offended look. The room goes silent, and Tony stops his guffaws to blink owlishly at the couple on the couch.

Thor wants to shake his head and sigh. Instead he watches the Soldier kick the Captain into the table and sprint away. 

“You should apologize, for putting down your Shield Mate like that, Captain,” Thor berates, brows furrowed, once Steven picks himself up from the splintered pieces of the table.

“It’s not right,” Thor says, in defense of the Winter Soldier, who had looked very much like what Lady Darcy would call a “kicked puppy”, and Steve looks so down and guilty that Thor things that his words have made the full impact, so he sits back and thinks and looks very much like the King he was supposed to be whilst on an extremely expensive and disappointingly not gold couch, and Steve nods and says, “you’re right, Thor.”

Loki once offered to smite anyone who did not refer to Thor as “your majesty,” then proceeded to tackle him off the throne and into a pillar. Thor’s feeling just that slightly melancholy now, unsure why, and he’s wondering what it would be like for someone to call him “your majesty” - exile did tend to make him feel more strongly about things like birthrights (with none of the dramatics of Loki, in hindsight, the whole adopted part did make sense) and sometimes the fact that Midgardians dismissed his title so casually did make him feel just a bit slighted. 

Steven jumps up and bolts out of the room as quickly as the Soldier did without any of the grand dismissals of the Asgardian court. Thor thinks he’ll let it slide.

\--

Thor does find himself thinking of royalty again, much later when he’s watching a particularly morbid show with Barton, something about games and thrones and dragons, and there’s an awful lot of death and incest and betrayal and what not. He doesn’t think of Loki, at all, nope, not one bit.

“You know,” Barton starts, eyes flicking to the entryway where the silhouette of Steve can be seen walking past the door for the fifth time that episode - except that it is more slumping and trudging than walking, really - “does this happen is Asgard? Like - not the incest thing - but like, the drama thing. Fighting, death, whatever?”

“There have been many great battles of past ages,” Thor muses, “and the Nine Realms is no perfect land of peace and security, so there have been many a times where bloodshed and terror are commonplace.”

Clint nods. Thor continues, “the battle to end all battles, the future foretelling of the fall of our worlds, Ragnarok. When the time comes, not even I shall remain standing after - destruction shall bring suffering and death to even the mightiest of us, and a world shall rise from the ashes, resurfaced new and fertile, and a new age shall begin.”

“That’s… interesting,” Clint says, nodding more. He seems rather spooked, but still interested.

“It is my duty, or was, rather, to prevent Ragnarok and save our people,” Thor hums. The Captain slinks past again, and Barton makes a sixth tally mark on the notepad on the table.

“Because you’re a warrior, or a King?” Clint asks, intrigued. 

“I,” Thor starts, pauses, thinks. 

“Both, I suppose,” Thor concedes, and Clint nods. On screen, someone is dying. Lady Darcy remarked, once, that the leading role in most Midgardian entertainment often braves all the odds and makes it out unscathed, but it seems that this particular series goes against that stigma. Just like life, Thor supposes, just because you were important and a hero doesn’t make you immune to the challenges and whatnot. You could succumb to your own mortality and face the consequences of your decisions at any time, leading role or royalty or inspirational figure, or anything else for that matter.

Clint makes a seventh tally mark.

\--

Thor searches up the definition of “queerbait”.  It seems that he may have misread the situation. Perhaps he was too quick to spring such accusations on the Captain? 

But surely the Soldier felt strongly about this matter, given his violent outburst. Thor supposes he shall bring up the matter tomorrow, when they break fast at first light.

\--

Stark hands Thor a plate at the table, and Natasha sets out the cutlery, and Steven and the Soldier are what Barton calls necking at the counter.

It appears that Thor has re-misread the situation.

“The verdict is yes,” Barton exclaims into his food.

Stark nods emphatically and takes a large spoonful of leftover lasagna that is left heating slowly in the second pot on the stove, and drops the spoon onto Lady Pepper and her Stark Tablet when The Winter Soldier whips around to glare at him. Thor understands a man who appreciates his food.

“Who the fuck eats lasagna at 10am?” Pepper snaps. 

\--

“You know, Thor,” Captain Steven says, much later that day when the team finds themselves back in the common room, whilst the Soldier is snuffling at his shoulder and has his legs in a vice-like grip around the former’s waist, “I just wanted to thank you.”

“For?” Thor says, mug of beer raised halfway to his lips, pauses and sets the drink heavily on the table.

“For, you know,” Steven says, then flushes red.

“You know,” Tony echoes from across him, eyebrows waggling, 

“You know,” Clint repeats, stifling a laugh.

“You know,” Steven says, again, in the tone of voice that Thor can tell is begging him to acknowledge the know and move on.

“I know,” Thor nods, amused, and grins when Steven deflates and his lover takes the opportunity to tighten his grip.

“You know,” Tony says, again, in a much more intriguing and mischievous tone of voice that even Natasha looks up and narrows her eyes in his direction.

“We’re both rather alike, Cap,” he starts, and said Captain groans.

“We’re both made by Howard, we both have lovers, we’ve both fallen out of - or with, the specifics aren’t quite important, a plane at one point in our lives,” and Clint Barton leans forward in anticipation of the punchline, and is sorely disappointed when Tony sits back to let his sentence trail off and takes a sip of his coffee. 

“That’s it?” Steven says, incredulous, and even Thor cannot believe that that is, in fact, the it.

“That’s it,” Tony shrugs.

And then there’s a pause, in which no one says anything as they stare at Tony and contemplate whatever possible meaning he could have implied with whatever abstract logic he derived from wherever his logic was derived from, and the silence stretches and remains uncomfortable such that the Soldier stops trying to crush Steven’s pelvis with his thighs and looks up warily, and Thor himself thinks harder than he possibly did in the past week during his stay.

And then Tony says, “both of us are about to get laid tonight,” and Sam Wilson gives Tony Stark a standing ovation and Clint Barton hoots and Thor decides that clapping would be the appropriate form of congratulations for both his friends, and the Soldier sinks his teeth into the soft of Steve’s shoulder for no discernable reason at all.

\--

Much, much later, when Thor is antsy and promptly returns back on Midgard a short few months later, the Winter Soldier, or James, crashes into the common room wide-eyed and grinning.

Thor is taken aback. The last time he had seen said soldier, James was hell bent on glaring at him. Or at anyone, for that matter.

“Party,” James says, softly, but he affixes Thor with a stern look to get his point across, “Steve, drunk.”

Thor gets the gist of it.

“Worry not, my good friend,” Thor says, albeit warily, still unsure of their standing - acquaintances? Allies? Teammates? - but James is appeased with his answer, and sits heavily on the couch next to him.

“How are you and the captain, friend?” Thor asks.

James squints at him, and when Thor feels appropriately judged and weighed under the scrutiny of the Winter Soldier, James says, “Steve is stupid.”

He says so, so warm and affectionately that Thor can feel the love.

“Indeed,” Thor agrees, not to the insult but to the fondness through James’s exasperated voice, and James seems to know what Thor is agreeing to, and nods.

And then Natasha and Clint saunter in, and Clint tosses a deck of cards on the table.

The cards slide off the table and scatter themselves all over the floor.

“Aw, cards,” says Clint,

James blinks at him, unimpressed.

\--

What Lady Pepper dubs the “Get Steve Drunk” party sees Thor, tipsy, loudly applauding as Steven professes to his beloved and then sob in Natasha’s sweatpants.

The aftermath of said party brings about what Lady Pepper dubs a “Red Light PR Scandal.”

Frankly, it’s even more hilarious than the Vintage Queerbait Situation. But Pepper is yelling into her phone and waving her arms frantically at someone who can’t see her, so Thor stays quiet.

Sitting across her, slowly eating cereal, is Tony. He looks appropriately chastised.

Completely unapologetic, on the other hand, is James who eats cereal with his usual gusto. Steven is dozing, head on the table and arms loosely encircling James’s waist.

“We need to hold a press conference,” Pepper announces to the room at large.

Tony snickers, then quietens at Pepper’s glare. James blinks lazily, and Steven’s head pops up.

“Huh, what?”

Thor agrees. Huh, what?

“To address the fact that you’re bisexual, and that you have a boyfriend,” Pepper clarifies.

Thor is even more confused. Why should the Captain need to address the general public on his sexual orientation and his relationship status? Should things be of concern to enough people that an entire public relations department needs to get involved?

“Aw,” Steve says, then, “I can’t just tweet about it, or something?”

Tweet?

From the couch, Son of Barton calls, “you have like, 35 million twitter followers, by the way, that number tripled since last night,” there was a pause, “that clip of you and James necking is on Fox. And CNN. And… every other news channel.”

Apparently it is, then.

Steve pulls out his phone, taps quickly, and then sets it down on the table.

There’s a long pause, punctuated by Bruce taking a long drink of his coffee.

Then, “hey, did you just tweet some- oh wow, Fox has it up. They’re live right now and- oh. Oh. Wow.” 

Thor cranes his neck to take a glance at Barton’s tablet.

In large font, @CapSteveGRogers proclaims himself “Bisexual and Taken”.

Thor can hear the voice of Pepper’s correspondent grow increasingly frantic through the phone. He pictures a second Pepper on the line.

This Pepper slowly pulls the phone from her ear, and ends the call. And then she grabs Tony’s slowly disappearing cereal.

“Babe,” Tony starts.

“Sorry,” says Steve, looking only slightly more sorry than James does.

Ah yes. It’s good to be back on Midgard.


	11. A Hulk Level Event

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, Bruce!

**A Hulk Level Event**   


Bruce has gone through a lot of weird shit in his life, Bruce can literally turn into a giant green rage monster, Bruce has experienced every possible emotion on the human spectrum of emotion, he thinks.

Bruce should stop thinking of himself in third person.

“Banner,” Tony croons, from where he’s sprawled over the couch with a bottle in his hand.

Bruce should ignore Tony.

“Banner,” Tony says again, louder.

Where is Pepper when you need her? 

“BANNER,” Tony says, and Bruce understands what Clint means when he quipped “you sound like Steve in handcuffs, Tony,” in which elicited a  very bashful squeak from a very red Steve and a slightly murderous look from James back when he was still known as The Winter Soldier, looking partway between wanting to lob Clint’s head off and protect Steve’s virtue and also wanting to know what Steve in handcuffs sounded like for himself.

“Cap,” Clint had said, and made an obscene gesture that Bruce thought was supposed to represent handcuffs going onto wrists but instead looked a lot rather like… something going onto something, and then Clint had said, “lock.”

“BRILLANT,” Tony had said in reply, looking absolutely delighted, and the Soldier’s look turns from heated to… a different kind of heated, and Bruce had thought, he didn’t need to be here for this.

“BRUCE,” Tony says, much much louder, and lobs a pillow at him.

Bruce lets the pillow hit the back of his head, and gives a long suffering sigh, wondering when the Avengers stopped fearing the possibility of him turning into the Hulk.

“Yes, Tony,” he says, turning around, and Tony beams at him, blinks once, twice.

“Hi.”

Bruce squints. “Hi.”

Then he says, “how bored are you?”

And Tony says, “Pepper’s busy yelling at Steve.”

“So, very,” Bruce translates.

“At first I screenshotted the never-ending social media riot, but then Twitter went down like Moby Dick.”

“Moby Dick survived the book,” Bruce says mildly. 

“Moby Dick is a book?” Tony says.

Bruce blinks again. “How long have you been awake, Tony?”

“Pep’s been out there being responsible for like, 3 days,” Tony says.

“Pretty sure Pepper’s slept at least once in those 3 days,” Bruce says.

“Yeah,” Tony says, then falls silent. Bruce watches him for a long moment, as Tony stares into his coffee and then into the wall like JARVIS would give him the answers to life, or something. So Bruce says, really softly, “you know Pepper’s fine, right? She can take care of herself. She can literally set people on fire. Steve and James are with her in DC. JARVIS would wake you if anything happens, anyways.”

“Yeah,” Tony says again, and then doesn’t protest, much, when Bruce takes the mug away and herds him to bed. He does say that he’s not a child, once, and Bruce replies that yes, he’s not, and then Tony’s sound asleep, and Bruce makes his way down to the lab with the stolen coffee.

\--

Much later, when Twitter’s back online again and Bruce’s feed explodes with a tag from Steve’s tweet and like, a thousand comments and counting, he opens his phone. Now, normally Bruce would avoid these things - social media, he means, with all that noise and agitating things being thrown around, but if Steve tagged him in something then he supposes it might be worth to take  peek, even if it’s just a fuck-you to congress (as his previous tweets were). 

Oh. Well.

It’s a still from the Christmas Party a couple of years back when drunk Steve insisted on the traditions of the mistletoe, and it’s appropriately captioned with “into dudes back then and into dudes right now”, with what was possibly the weirdest hashtag he had ever seen, #dontsaybyecapsaybicap. 

Intrigued, he clicks on it. There’s an apparel line by Stark Industries and a lot of adorable selfies of James and Steve’s faces being mushed together, and also fanart. 

And then he immediately gets a video call, and it’s Steve looking wide eyed and absolutely apologetic, immediately jumping into a flurry of apologies about posting the picture in the heat of the moment halfway through a rant about bisexual erasure which took up the past 30 tweets. James is looking really proud of himself in the background, sprawled across a large hotel bed and tapping on his own phone with a mischievous glint in his eye, very much like the twinkle he had just before sloppily drenching Steve’s bedroom in red paint,whilst muttering “if you want something red then fucking have something red” in Russian, in retaliation to the picture that Clint had sent the Winter Soldier which featured Steve and Natasha in liplock. Up till now, Bruce denies his involvement.  

“It’s fine, Steve,” Bruce says awkwardly. 

Steve looks like a kicked puppy, wide eyed and pouting. Bruce blinks, stunned, at the sudden onslaught of adorableness. 

James looks up at the sudden break in noise, squints at Steve, gives Bruce a shy smile, then goes back to grinning  as he types.

“Just don’t do it again,” Bruce says, and Steve nods so earnestly that Bruce thinks he’ll give himself whiplash. He isn’t particularly offended by it, anyhow, and while a picture of him and Steve kissing is circulating on the internet, it doesn’t spark enough anger in Bruce (or any anger, for that matter) to induce a Hulk-level event.

“Right,” Steve says, grinning, and then immediately pulls out his phone and types furiously and promptly forgets that Bruce exists. Or that the video call is still running, apparently.

Bruce blinks again. Did Steve expect the call to cut automatically? Was he waiting for Bruce to cut it? He stares at the screen for another long minute, as Steve furrows his brow and then snorts at his phone screen, then shrugs. The video call isn’t disruptive, anyways, and seeing James make funny faces in the background is comical enough that Bruce doesn’t see why he should cut the call, so he lets it run in the background and pulls out a blueprint.

When Bruce looks up again, Steve has joined James on the bed and is lying on his back, tongue sticking out. James is squished by his side.

It’s adorable. Bruce would say that he entertained the thought of romance, maybe from before he messed with radiation and turned into the Hulk. He hasn’t seen a single trace of Betty ever since he ran away into isolation, and other romantic entanglements are obviously out of the question. 

What if Bruce turned into the Hulk whenever there was a minor disagreement? What if he crushed his bed-mate during a nightmare? What if he freaked out if there was a slight problem and destroyed their kitchen? What if Bruce stopped thinking in third person?

Bruce doesn’t think he stopped thinking in third person ever since he started turning green. He likes to differentiate himself and the Hulk, given that there were 2… people? Entities? Consciousness? Occupying one physical body, and some thoughts were Bruce thoughts and some thoughts were Hulk thoughts, and some rare thoughts were Hulk-and-Bruce thoughts because getting the Hulk to agree with Bruce on something is like trying to agree with Tony on something. 

Except that if he wanted Tony out of his head, Bruce would just walk out of a room, or something. That part was convenient.

Pepper walks on screen, back faced towards Bruce and wagging a finger at James, pointing to something on her tablet that Bruce can’t see. 

“It wasn’t my fault,” James’ voice is carried through the speaker.

“You told Justin Hammer to suck Steve’s dick and see how good it is before making comments about your sexuality,” Pepper screeches.    

“It’s true,” James protests, “if he knew how great Steve’s dick was, he’d-”

“Don’t finish that sentence, James,” Steve says lazily, rolling onto his stomach.

“You!” Pepper pointed another accusing finger at Steve, “that picture of you and Bruce-”

“-I called him to apologize,” Steve interrupts, “he’s cool with it.” Then he looks behind Pepper to see Bruce still on the video call, watching them in amusement, “Right? Say you’re cool with it.”

“I’m cool with it,” Bruce calls out.

Pepper turns around and smiles at Bruce, rolling her eyes skyward, then turns back to Steve and sighs.

Bruce totally understands.

\--

“You know,” Tony says, after a 16 hour nap and the most flowery shower he’d had this week, gestures to the TV screen where Fox News is flashing tweet after tweet of Steve and James’s internet commentary, in the midst of the multitude of press conferences that they and Pepper have held in the heart of DC.

“Hm?” Bruce says, sipping some tea. 

“I’ve always thought James would be the extremely possessive and jealous type. Like, the look-at-Steve-the-wrong-way-and-no-one-will-find-your-body type, not the tweet-at-multiple-politicians-to-tell-them-to-touch-Steve’s-abs-to-see-where-he’s-coming-from type.”

Natasha snorts incredibly loud into her soup.

“He’s like, a little of both,” Clint says, chopsticks waving in the air, “did you forget the whole time he thought Steve and Sharon were dating? Or after he found out that Nat and Steve kissed?”

“I haven’t forgotten that at all,” Sharon says, and pops a maki roll into her mouth.

“James is a lot more chill than the Winter fucking Soldier,” Clint says, “but he can still be one jealous and vengeful bitch, but only to people he thinks actually pose a threat to their relationship.”

Natasha snorts again. “Pose a threat,” she snickers.

“Flattered that the Winter Soldier thought I would steal his boyfriend,” Sharon says.

“That makes sense,” Sam says.

“He became, super cool with it when he found out I had no interest in Steve’s dick at all,’ Natasha says, “and then he thought I was a suitable person to discuss Steve related matters with, because then he could swoon and go into excruciating detail because he loves oversharing and I wouldn’t be tempted to rob that star spangled ass from under him,” she paused, “honestly still think he was exaggerating at some parts.”

“What parts,” Tony leered, and Bruce decided that it was appropriate to reach over and knock him on the head.

“I don’t care what supersoldier serum Rogers got,” Natasha stresses,  “but there is no fucking way he can suck his own dick.”

Clint spat out his drink.

“What the fuck what the fuck,” Sharon whispers, eyes wide.

“I’ve seen Rogers bent over and there is NO WAY he is flexible enough,” Natasha says again.

“Holy shit,” Tony says, grinning.

Bruce takes another sip of his own tea. He was pretty sure Clint could… bend that far, circus background and all, but he wasn’t too sure about Steve, and there was no way he wanted to continue thinking about it. Bruce wanted absolutely no part of this, at all. Bruce was sure Hulk agreed with him.

“And,” Natasha said, looking both horrified and gleeful at the same time and Tony looked like he was watching a train wreck in slow motion and Clint clapped his hands over his ears like he wasn’t deaf and leaning over the table to read Natasha’s lips.

“James told me this very interesting story about metal fingers and butts, but I don’t think it’s suitable for the table” Natasha said, and Tony threw his chopsticks at her.

Natasha dodged it, and didn’t seem like she was in the mood to be angry at all.

“Cockblock!” Clint yelled.

She cackled.

Bruce decided it was time to make himself scarce. He doesn’t think he could look either Steve or James in the eye anymore, not with the knowledge of their sex exploits that the Black Widow felt the need to bless his ears with. He liberated the pack of sushi that Tony was eyeing - not to eat, but to toss at the resident female assassin, and made a mad dash to the safety of his lab.

Oh god, where is Pepper when you need her?

\--

Somehow, a whole 16 hours later, no one had touched the video call and Bruce was greeted to the sight of Steve and James standing in the middle of the room, heads bent and talking softly with their noses touching.

It was all very cute and sweet and a refreshing change from the racy conversation in the common room, that is, until James very roughly shoves Steve with a metal arm.

Bruce almost drops his pack of food. Steve crashes against the wall and manages to sweep everything off the bedside table, and James lunges at Steve.

“Shit,” says Bruce, when Steve roundhouse kicks James in the goddamn face and sends him flying across the room. He feels a little faint. Is the Hulk coming? Is this a Hulk level evemt? 

“Jarvis,” Bruce says a little frantically, taking deep breaths, wondering if this was a relapse of the Winter Soldier’s let’s-murder-Captain-America mode and weighing the options, seeing if this warranted an Avengers Assemble thing, or if Steve could get James under control, when he sees Steve traps James in a headlock and then wrestles to pin him, before the latter does some anatomically impossible maneuver and flips them over.

It's truly good luck and the blessings of the gods from every single religion that Bruce manages to shriek “turn it off, turn it OFF JARVIS” and have the screen black out mercifully, seconds after super soldiers start making out on their hotel room floor after breaking half the furniture and thankfully seconds before they start having wild sex with an unsuspecting audience member.

Fuck. That wasn’t a fight, was it? Was it foreplay? Is that what they did all the time?

Holy shit.

That was NOT a Hulk Level Event. Hulk wanted no part of it.

Holy. SHIT. 

\--

Bruce is absolutely mentally scarred. There is no way around it. Bruce has seen many many things in his life, but not once has he wanted to see any of his friends in the middle of the act. Ever. EVER.

He definitely can’t look Steven Grant Rogers or James in the eye ever again.

Wait. What was James’ full name? Just James? James Winter Soldier? Winter Soldier James? They knew his full name, right?

“It’s James Buchanan Barnes,” Natasha says, flipping through a magazine and stretching out against one of the sofas Tony puts in his labs for some reason, that he knows the man ends up crashing on after adrenaline-sciencing.

“Holy shit,” Bruce says.

“Do you know you speak aloud sometimes?” Natasha says.

“You have to stop sneaking up on people like that,” Bruce says, “especially me.”

“I’m a spy, it’s what I do,” Natasha argues.

“James is a spy and he never sneaks up on me like that,” Bruce points out.

“The Winter Soldier is NOT a spy,” Natasha chortles.

Bruce is confused. “He’s not?”

“The Winter Soldier was the most deadly and also the most fucking unstable asset that Hydra or the Red Room or Department X or anywhere else had ever gotten, they weren’t going to send him on fucking covert spy missions,” she said, rolling her eyes as she said the last 3 words as if they personally offended her.

“He killed as many of their own as he did his targets. You know what they had to do to keep him under control? They had to strip every bit of his humanity, turn him into their little doll, they had to make him so goddamn dependent so he would never run away, and yet he still managed to hold on abit to himself and break their toys like they broke him. The Winter Soldier couldn’t act natural around humans if they made him become a weapon for 70 years,” Natasha continues.

Bruce stays silent, and walks over to sit by her.

Natasha pauses, blinks at him and reaches over to pat his shoulder, but doesn’t apparently seem too concerned that surges of emotion would trigger a transformation into an unstoppable monster of any kind. Instead she says, “He was a great assassin, because he could hold on to a rifle and stay in position for days without needing food  or water or needing to stand up. It was - it was torture, that’s what it was. It wasn’t discipline, or determination, like the Red Room wanted us to believe. The Winter Soldier trained the Widows to fight, to stay hidden and to disappear, but he could never have trained us to flirt or talk to people, because he didn’t know how to do that. He was barely a person.”

There was another pause. Eventually, Bruce says, “James is a person now.”

At that, Natasha smiles sadly. “Yeah. He is.”

“Why Steve?” She asks the room in general, “well, I think it’s because Steve appealed to the humanity in him. And because Steve saved him on the helicarrier - you know, he taught us that debts were terrible things. Repay them when they’re due and nobody can hold it over your head. Someone telling you that you owe them a debt is horrifying, because if they got the chance to say that to you, they’re probably good enough to make you pay up, whether you like it or not. I think that’s why The Soldier chose to save Steve from drowning.”

“After that? Whatever that got the Soldier to stay? It’s all Steve.” Natasha laughs, and Bruce can still hear the sadness and bitterness that is covered up with amusement. She says, “you know one of the first things he said to me, in Russian? He said, ‘who is this dumbass? Who is this dumbass that you let plan your missions? How good of a strategist is he, anyways, not a very good one if he lets me search his entire apartment and stay there. I could kill him at any time. Does he know I could murder him right now? How did he survive this long?”

“And you know what I said to him?” Natasha reaches over to steal a chip from the open bag that Tony left on the next table, when he was down a while ago. She’s curled up to Bruce’s side right now, legs hanging off the side of the couch and head in his lap. Bruce awkwardly pats her hair, and Natasha seems to like it, because if she didn’t, Bruce was sure she’d kick him.

“I said, that’s Steve Rogers for ya, and the Winter Soldier says, well that’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever witnessed, he’s going to get himself assassinated one day. And you know what else he said? He said, well that’s too bad for anyone trying because the world’s best assassin is right fucking here.”

“And that was the turning point for it, I think,” Natasha says, and Bruce holds the bag out so she can snag another chp without getting up. “That was - that wasn’t when he fell in love with Steve or anything, but I think that was when he decided to stay.”

Bruce runs his fingers through Nat’s hair, and she closes her eyes. Then he says, “wanna meditate with me? It’s almost 2.”

“Right, your daily meditation session,” Natasha says, then, “sure. The hair thing, it’s nice.”

“Yeah?” Bruce says.

“Yeah,” Natasha confirms, “Clint does my hair sometimes, but he tugs on it too hard.”

\--

“Congress hates me,” Steve says cheerfully, as he enters the common room on Friday. He has his luggage in one hand and Pepper’s in another, and James is wrapped on his back and clinging like a sloth on a tree. Bruce thinks that a lot of people would also climb Steve like a sloth on a tree, then thinks about the conversation involving Steve and James and flexibility they had 3 days ago, and then stamps on that thought. Immediately.

“And whose fault is that, I wonder,” Pepper says mildly.

“Dealing with me was a blessing,” Tony says to that, “a goddamn blessing, Pep. Never complain about me and PR again. I’m great with the press, especially when compared to Star Spangled Man with a Plan here.”

Steve groans. James snickers.

“Who’s strong and brave, here to save the American way?” James sings. Steve straightens and dumps him. James doesn’t seem too bothered, and switches to latch on to Steve’s right leg.

“Alright who showed James that video?” Steve says, looking mortified, and Clint and Tony hi-five in the background.

Bruce blinks at them, and then he sees where Natasha was coming from. Why James decided to stay, in the end.

It was because he found Steve, a warm body to lie with at night, someone who he felt the need to watch over or protect, as relayed by the infamous “protection detail”, and because he found the Avengers and their stupid dysfunctional family, with someone to braid hair and murder people and run on the treadmill with.

And because he’d found a home.

And Bruce figures he’d found one too, among Natasha bugging him in the lab and Clint breaking into his apartment to demand a movie-watching buddy when no one else was in, in between Tony’s strange experiments and Pepper yelling into her phone, with Steve telling Tony to watch his language like he doesn’t swear like a sailor himself and James being happily exhibitionistic, while Sam pats his shoulder and makes a quip about being the only two normal avengers, and Thor’s infrequent visits that ended with him nursing a hangover of asgardian proportions.

And, heck, maybe even the goddamn Hulk, who Bruce has learnt to build a life around and seems more like a live-in roommate or something, where all his friends have grown to accept into their lives and were no longer cautiously treading lines but treating him like he was normal, for one.

“Well?” Steve says, and Bruce finds that everyone is staring at him.

“What?” Bruce asks.

“We asked if you were okay with Italian for dinner,” Sam says, “that new restaurant a couple of streets down?”

“That’s fine,” Bruce says. 

“See you at 6,” Tony claps his hands, and Steve starts to waddle to the elevator with James still on his leg with Pepper and Tony in tow, while Clint and Sam swing over to the couch. And Natasha catches his eye and smiles winningly at him, and Bruce knows that she knows that he’s got it.  

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY FOR THE EXTRA SPORADIC UPDATE also who wants some major angst the next chapter because I am ready


	12. An AU

Taking into account the advice from my amazing reviewers, this fic has been moved! 

It is now in a new fic from the same series, "This is how it starts", titled "Coming". 

Please heed the warnings for the fic! Thank you!

 


	13. Stupid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wanda and Pietro officially join the Avengers!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm.

Stupid

“Stupid, stupid,” Wanda chastises softly.

Pietro lets out a long, indignant whine. He pushes his nose into her neck and sinks, bonelessly, into her lap.

“Stupid,” she says again, and rubs along his spine.

“My therapist says you shouldn’t use that word,” Iron Man, Stark, calls out. He is in the cockpit. They are in something called a quinjet.

“Stupid,” Wanda says.

“I appreciate it,” Hawkeye, Barton, says.

“Sorry,” Pietro says.

\--

This is how it starts: 

Iron Man builds a weapon of mass destruction. 

The weapon mass destructs. 

The Avengers, plus Wanda and Pietro, stop the weapon from mass destructing. 

\--

But this is how it really starts: 

Pietro takes a bullet to the gut.

Then Pietro takes another bullet to the gut.

Then Pietro takes a fist to the face, and a metal arm takes more bullets that would have went into Pietro’s gut.

Then Pietro gets an incredibly disappointed look from an incredibly angry looking man with an incredibly bulletproof metal arm.

“Holy shit,” Pietro says.

“Stupid,” Wanda calls him.

\--

“You know,” Captain America, Rogers, says, “there’s a whole lot of ways to stop bullets other than with your body.”

He looks incredibly disappointed.

“He looks more disappointed than metal arm guy there,” Pietro whispers in Romanian.

“That’s the Winter Soldier,” Wanda whispers back.

The Winter Soldier, Barnes, snorts.

“The Captain is right,” Wanda says, again, “stupid. You are fast, not bulletproof. Use your brain.”

“My brain cannot stop bullets,” Pietro tells her, affronted.

The Winter Soldier snorts again. 

“Does he speak Romanian?” Wanda asks Pietro.

“I don’t know, use your brain,” Pietro says, then, “I don’t know. I haven’t heard him speak.”

“Is that the new rule, now? Is this how we are initiating our members? Do all our newly recruited Avengers come in speaking a different language now? You have to seduce them too, Captain, so they’ll start speaking English. That’s jailbait, ain’t it?”

“Tony!” Rogers scolds.

“Stupid,” Wanda mutters.

The Winter Soldier rolls his eyes. She thinks he agrees.

\--

“Are they having a fight?” Wanda says.

She has her knees propped up on a chair. Pietro is braiding her hair. 

They are in some place called Avengers Tower. It’s tall, but ugly. The thing called a quinjet landed on it.

“Who?” 

“Iron Man and Captain America,” she says.

Pietro hums.

The Winter Soldier is there again. He watches them.

Captain America, like Pietro, is braiding The Winter Soldier’s hair.

The Avengers are weird.

Wanda likes it.

“Captain,” Pietro calls out, and Captain America looks up. He has three bobby pins in his mouth.

“Are you and Iron Man having a fight?” Pietro asks.

“You don’t ask questions like that, stupid,” Wanda says. 

Pietro ignores her.

The Winter Soldier reaches over and plucks the bobby pins from Captain America’s mouth. Captain America says, “Well, I don’t- We aren’t really, I mean,”

Pietro raises an eyebrow.

“Yes,” the Captain says, with finality. “Yes, I am mad at him, and yes, we are having a fight.”

The Winter Soldier rolls his eyes, and puts the bobby pins in his mouth.

“Call me Steve,” Captain America says, “This is James. Iron man is Tony. Hawkeye is Clint, Black Widow is Natasha, Falcon is Sam and Bruce is the Hulk. Thor is, um, Thor.”

“Those are such white people names,” Pietro tells her.

“Mhm,” says Wanda.

\--

“These,” Iron Man, Tony, says, “initiation shots. Vodka.”

“They’re kids,” Captain America, Steve, says, appalled.

“How old are you?” Hawkeye, Clint, asks.

“17,” Pietro says, in English, then adds, “I’m older.”

“By 12 minutes,” Wanda interjects. 

“They speak our language,” Tony proclaims.

Steve, and Falcon, Sam, shoot him dirty looks. 

“Be nice, Tony,” a woman says, “stop being rude. And no alcohol, they’re 17.”

Tony pouts at her. Wanda likes her. She’s blonde, and pretty.

“We haven’t been introduced,” the woman says, and she puts out her hand. Wanda shakes it.

“I’m Pepper,” the woman says, “don’t mind Tony. He’s always a little insensitive, and we are all tired from the, um, well. We have rooms set up for you and your brother, and JARVIS will,” she cuts off and falls silent.

The room goes quiet.

Tony gets up wordlessly and leaves. Pepper looks at the room at large, looks apologetically at Pietro and Wanda, then follows him out.

“Who’s Jarvis?” Pietro asks.

“That’s Tony’s Artificial Intelligence,” Steve says, “he was merged with the Vision. He, uh, meant a lot to him. He was like family.”

“We have orange juice, you kids want some?” Clint says.

“I’ll have a glass,” Pietro says.

\--

The room that Pepper has prepared for them is nice. She gives them one room, not two, with two beds, because she knows that they would want to be near each other. They don’t sleep in the separate beds anyways.

Wanda thinks it’s nice, to have a bed that both her and her brother can fit in comfortably.

Pietro hugs her. Wanda tries not to mess up his bandages, and hugs back.

“First day as an Avenger,” he says, “what did you think?”

“It was stupid,” Wanda tells him.

They don’t sleep, but they don’t really talk either.

\--

In the morning, there is a knock on the door.

It’s Capt- Steve, and James. 

“Hey,” Steve says, “the team usually have breakfast together at about 9am, on the communal floor on 76th. We were wondering if you would like to join us? Since you’re part of the team, and all.”

He looks awkward. James is clinging onto his back, with his legs around Steve’s waist. It’s funny.

“Okay,” Wanda says, “I will get my brother.”

Steve beams at her. He’s pretty. 

James looks at her, as if to say, I know, right?

\--

When Pietro and Wanda walk into the floor, Steve tells the room, “we are going to have a debrief.”

“At breakfast, Cap?” Clint says.

James has a bowl of cereal on his lap. He looks up, throws a spoon, then starts drinking the cereal from the bowl.

The spoon hits Steve on the forehead.

“After breakfast,” he concedes.

The Avengers are weird.

Wanda likes it.

“Help yourself to anything,” Black Widow, Natasha, says. 

Pietro starts making a sandwich. Wanda grabs a jar of jam, and some toast.

The Vision is there, too.

“Do you want some?” Wanda offers. 

“I don’t eat,” The Vision says, “but thank you.”

He sounds awkward, like he is trying to figure out how to be a person.

“That’s okay, I’m trying to figure that out too,” Wanda tells him softly.

Vision looks at her, then gives what she thinks he thinks is a human smile. Wanda thinks he gets what she means.

Pepper is patting Tony, who has his head in her lap. James has put his cereal bowl in the dishwasher, and is now sitting on Steve. Clint and Natasha and Sam and Thor and Bruce are on the couch together, and it looks like a tight fit, even though there is another empty couch.

The Avengers are weird.

Wanda likes it.

Pietro squishes next to her, in the same chair, the same way James is trying to press into Steve, and the same way Clint and Natasha and Sam and Thor and Bruce are pressed to each other.

Wanda thinks she gets it.

“Debrief?” Steve says, once James has stuffed the last banana into his mouth.

James gives him a baleful look.

Tony opens an eye, sighs, then closes the eye.

“Lay it on us, Cap,” says Clint, who leans back and jostles Natasha and receives an elbow to his ribs.

“I think we did well,” Steve says, “We tried to minimize casualties and get the Sokovians out quickly - although our response time could be improved, and there were issues about manpower deployment because of missing and last minute team members,” and he pulls out an incredibly large folder, and James lets out a theatrical sigh. 

Wanda looks around.

The Avengers have mostly settled in, making themselves comfortable. 

“This is going to take a while,” Clint tells her. 

Steve looks up to narrow his eyes at them, then gesture to the map of Sokovia dramatically.

Pietro meets her eye, shrugs, then stretches out to sink into the chair.

\--

It does take a while.

By the time Steve concludes the debrief, the Vision looks like he is the only one left being attentive.

Wanda blinks wearily. 

“Wait,” Steve mutters to himself.

“No,” James says. He grabs the folder.

“Wait, no,” Steve says, “I think-”

“No,” James says, emphatically.

“I think if we went for the beta-6 instead of alpha-3 maneuver, then-” Steve starts.

“You considered that last night,” James says, “you considered everything last night.”

Steve blinks.

“I did?”

Tony stands up. “You’re going to sleep.”

Steve scowls at him. “Oh, you’re the one to talk, about sleep.”

“I know you’re still mad at me,” Tony snaps, “who fucking isn’t, okay? Look, it already happened, I fucked up, and-”

“Language,” Steve says, absently, “we have kids here.”

Tony blinks, once, twice.

Tony says, softly, “okay, Cap, okay.”

Wanda remembers their minds. She remembers Tony, kneeling in front of bodies and crying because he wasn’t strong enough, and Steve, turning his head in peacetime and all he sees is war.

And Wanda sees Steve clap Tony’s shoulder, and then James tuck the folder under his arm and herd Steve to the elevator with another.

“Stupid,” she tells Pietro.

“Hm?” He asks sleepily.

“The Avengers. Fighting is stupid.”

“Hm,” Pietro agrees.

\--

They’re still fighting, Iron Man and Captain America. 

Wanda feels it. They seem nice to each other, but Steve is still mad at Tony, and Tony is still mad at everything.

She thinks that Steve has a right to be mad at Tony, because what he did was stupid, but staying mad this long is even more stupid, because they’re friends.

She tells that to the Vision, who nods and says, “I agree. The Captain and Sir have gone through a lot of battles before, it would be a shame for this to split them apart.”

“At least they’re not fighting over a book,” Wanda says.

“Yes,” the Vision says, “that would be terrible. Tear-rible. Like the pun. Do you know what puns are? I’ve been doing some reading.”

Wanda thinks she likes the Vision. He’s pretty funny, in a weird non-human way.

\--

They do fight over a book.

“Stupid,” she tells Pietro.

“Yes,” he agrees. 

Steve has his arms thrown up, and he’s gesturing angrily to the book, that James is reading.

“Awful,” he says, “horrible, disgusting! I can’t believe you brought this into my house!”

“Your house?” Tony glares. “This is my goddamn tower.”

James looks up from the book. He scowls at both of them.

“It’s not that bad,” James cajoles, “it’s a fun story.”

“Who the fuck thinks this is a good book?” Steve yells.

“Can I read it?’ Pietro asks, and then James glares at him and shakes his head.

“Nobody is reading this,” Steve snaps, “nobody.”

“They’re making a movie after it,” Tony says, and Steve screams. James pats his back consolingly.

“Can I read it?” Pietro asks again.

Tony looks at him for a moment, considering.

Then he says, “no. Nope. Fifty shades is not a children’s book. Also you said a bad word in front of the kids, Cap.”

“This entire book is one bad word,” Steve hisses, then wrenches the book from James’ hands and tears it in half.

“Woah,” says Wanda.

“Woah,” says Pietro.

“Woah,” says Tony.

“Woah,” says James.

James’ woah is a different woah. All the woah’s were different, but James has a weird look in his eye now. Wanda takes a step back.

James looks from what’s left of the book, to Steve, then to the book again.

Then he says, “you know, it’s given me some ideas.”

“Oh no,” says Tony.

“What?” says Steve, then, “oh. Woah.”

“Woah,” James agrees, then kisses him.

“Woah,” Pietro says, for an entirely different reason.

“Woah,” Wanda agrees.

“Woah,” Tony says, as James pushes Steve into the elevator. He looks to Wanda and Pietro, the book, then says, “oh. They’re engaged, by the way. Steve and James. Gay Grandpa Supersoldiers. Bisexual? Steve proposed months ago, you should have been there, it was really shocking, because we didn’t know that he knew Russian but he did, and he proposed in Russian, and- ok, you know what? That’s a new team bonding activity. Explaining their relationship. See you at the common room at 6.”

Tony then saunters out, and Wanda blinks at the book.

“Woah,” Pietro says, again.

\--

There are abrasions around Steve’s wrists. 

Wanda ignores it.

The Avengers ignore it, too.

“Team bonding time,” Tony says, clapping, “story telling. The backstory of how Steve lost the Cold War, here.”

Steve looks up sharply.

Thor sits forward, intrigued. 

“It starts,” Tony says, “when the helicarriers fall into the Potomac - were you there? Were you two there? When SHIELD found out that HYDRA was still alive, and then 3 giant flying ships exploded in mid-air? Did you see that?”

“No,” Pietro says.

Clint and Sam sit back as Tony rattles on, up until the point where he describes James pulling Steve out of the river.

“It was terrifying,” Tony says, “I don’t even know what he said. In Russian?”

“He called you stupid,” Natasha tells him serenely, “and he called Steve stupid, too, for letting him live.”

“What?” Steve says, “what did he say?”

James doesn’t look bothered. He pats Steve’s face and tucks his head under Steve’s chin.

Wanda wonders how she missed the whole engaged thing.

“He followed Steve into his hospital room,” Sam tells Wanda and Pietro, “and he wouldn’t stop growling. Tony’s right, it was terrifying.”

James gives the room a peaceful smile.

“He stole my coffee,” Steve says to that, “and he kept saying Protection Detail, to everything he did. He stole my coffee, said protection detail. Stole my cereal, said protection detail. Stole my blanket, said protection detail. Stole my goddamn bed and my goddamn heart-”

James purrs.

“Woah,” Pietro says.

“Yeah, woah,” Clint says, then, “hey JARVIS-”

The room goes quiet.

“FRIDAY,” Tony corrects, “say FRIDAY.”

Clint blinks at him.

“Hey, FRIDAY?” He says, softly.

The ceiling trills in acknowledgement.

“Woah,” Pietro says.

“Woah,” Wanda agrees.

“Oh, woah, okay,” Clint looks pleasantly surprised, then, “FRIDAY, you have tapes on James saying Protection Detail?”

A projection flashes on the empty wall.

An image pops up. 

> Projector-James is looking murderously at Projector-Natasha, who is smiling at him. Projector-Natasha is cuddled against Projector-Steve, who looks incredibly awkward.

“That’s The Winter Soldier,” Clint tells them, in explanation.

The Winter Soldier is nothing like James. The Winter Soldier wouldn’t have stopped bullets from going into Pietro’s gut. He probably would have put more there.

Projector-James, or Projector-Winter-Soldier, growls something in what Wanda thinks is Russian.

“That’s the protection detail,” Clint says, again.

> Projector-Natasha huffs at him, and Projector-Steve whines, “Nat.”
> 
> Projector-Winter-Soldier tugs at Projector-Steve’s arm meaningfully and says the Russian phrase again.
> 
> Projector-Steve lets himself be pulled off the couch, and Projector-Winter-Soldier glares at him, then at Projector-Natasha.

The scene cuts, and Projector-Steve is lounging on the couch with a bowl of chips, and Projector-Winter-Soldier jumps onto his lap.

> Projector-Steve shrieks.
> 
> “Protection detail,” Projector-Winter-Soldier says, then takes the bowl and starts eating out of it.
> 
> He feeds Projector-Steve one, when he whines.

“Woah,” Pietro says.

The scene cuts again, and this time Projector-Steve is walking down the hallway when Projector-Winter-Soldier appears, spins Projector-Steve around and kisses him.

> “Protection Detail,” Projector-Winter-Soldier says.

Wanda thinks he sounds smug.

> Projector-Winter-Soldier sprints away.
> 
> “What the fuck does that mean?” Projector-Steve screams after him.
> 
> Projector-Clint rounds the corner.
> 
> “What does that word mean?” Projector-Steve screams at him.
> 
> Projector-Clint looks suitably shocked. “What?”
> 
> “The Russian word he always says! The soldier! What the fuck is he saying?”
> 
> Projector-Clint binks. “Why?”
> 
> “He kissed me! Said it, then ran away!”Projector-Steve flapped his arms comically.
> 
> Projector-Clint splutters.
> 
> Projector-Clint says, “wait, is that the first time he kissed you?”
> 
> Projector-Steve turns incredibly red. “Uhm. Yeah. Uh, no.”

“Oh my god,” Clint says, “I remember that.”

“Oh my god,” Steve says.

James purrs, again.

> “Before or after you became boyfriends?” Projector-Clint asks.
> 
> “Um. After,” Projector-Steve says, still blushing, then, “oh my god. Tell me what it means.”
> 
> “Nope,” Projector-Clint says.
> 
> “Ugh,” says Projector-Steve.

“Stupid,” Wanda says.

“Mhm,” Pietro agrees.

\--

There’s a knock on the door.

It’s Steve.

“When James was still The Soldier,” he says in explanation, “I bought him lots of stuff. Uh, clothes. It helps, having a lot of different things to wear and ways to express himself, and uh, you and Pietro don’t have, much.”

Wanda blinks at him.

“Shopping,” Steve says, “we’re going shopping. James, Natasha, Clint and I. You’re welcome to join us.”

Wanda blinks at him again.

Then she says, “sure.”

Steve grins at her.

\--

Shopping is weird.

The Avengers are weird.

Wanda likes it.

“No, get the blue,” Tony says, in the video call from the phone Steve is holding up, “blue is totally your colour.”

“He has a lot of blue shirts,” Natasha tells Tony, “get the red.”

“Red is my colour,” Tony whines, the same time Steve says, “why are we sticking to American Flag colours again?”

“Red is Wanda’s colour,” Clint justifies, “her magic is literally red.”

“My hair is red,” Natasha tells him, sniffing.

“Your hair was purple a week ago,” James says, “doesn’t count. The star on my arm is red.”

“We should be the red team. Redvengers.” Tony says.

“I’m red, because I got shot,” Pietro says.

“I get shot too,” Clint tells him, “so am I red?”

“Redvengers,” Tony says again. 

“I’ll do green,” Steve says.

“That’s Bruce’s colour,” James informs him.

Steve gives James a long suffering look.

“No,” Clint says, “no, yeah, do green, Steve. Olive, not lime. Pietro, do blue.”

Natasha watches the proceedings for a moment, then turns to Wanda and goes, “you, me. Shoes?”

“Okay,” Wanda says, and Natasha leads the way into another section of the store.

There are shoes. A lot of shoes.

Hundreds of shoes.

“Heels or flats?” Natasha asks her.

Flats were better for running. But heels made her feel taller, and more powerful.

“Heels?” Wanda says.

“Hm,” Natasha says.

\--

“Tony says he’ll make special shoes for me,” Pietro informs her, “something that can withstand my running speeds. Extra durable soles, breathable, whatnot.”

“I have 7 new pairs of shoes,” Wanda says, “4 of them are heels.”

“You look pretty, sis,” Pietro says sincerely, “is that a new dress?”

“Yeah,” Wanda tells him, “I like your jacket.”

“Thanks,” Pietro says, “it’s huge. It’s like a boyfriend jacket. I can pretend I have a boyfriend now.”

Wanda pauses.

Thinks.

Then she says, “you can find a boyfriend now.”

Pietro smiles at her. “Or a girlfriend.”

“Yeah,” she says, “but you can find one, now.”

“I suppose I can,” Pietro says, then, “Boyfriend, or girlfriend, or whatever. You, too.”

“Yeah,” she says, then, “I kinda like them. The Avengers. Even if they are stupid.”

“Mhm,” Pietro agrees. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not too sure about this. Not sure how to work on Wanda's character.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks!


End file.
